The green building movement has caught on in the construction industry in the past few years and with good reason – a report by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) released Monday shows buildings account for 40 percent of the world’s energy use, more than any other sector.
At the Energy Efficiency in Buildings conference held this week in Paris, the WBCSD – a consortium of some of the biggest construction companies in the world – laid out an ambitious goal of reducing the industry’s carbon footprint by 60 percent by the year 2050.
"To achieve an energy-efficient world, governments, businesses and individuals must transform the building sector through a multitude of actions, which include increasing energy awareness globally," the new report states.
If the world is to slow down the rate of climate change, the report says, it will take cutting the planet’s energy-related carbon footprint by 77 percent or 48 Gigatons to stabilize carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to reach the level called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In its report, Transforming the Market: Energy Efficiency in Buildings, the WBCSD said the building sector must undergo a transformation through a combination of public policies, technological innovation, informed customer choices and smart business decisions.
United Technologies Corp. (UTC) and Lafarge, which co-chaired the study, said the technologies exist and the opportunities to fix the carbon problem are bound only by a lack of will.
UTC chairman George David said that, unlike other industries that must undergo a more radical departure from past practices, the construction industry has at its disposal technologies and products to make buildings more energy efficient today.
"We have the capacity to reduce the carbon footprints of buildings by half over a decade and with reasonable financial returns," David said.