With reports that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, this year’s United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan was as important as ever. Global cooperation, finance, ambition and commitment are needed to make in-roads to limiting the impact of our warming planet.
RIBA and VELUX were on the ground promoting not just the need for urgent action to decarbonise the built environment – which is responsible for around 37% of total carbon emissions globally – but also underscoring that most of the tools to achieving that exist today. No yet-to-be found silver bullet is needed. Instead, we need to ramp up the collaboration and knowledge sharing.
By working together and sharing our solutions and know-how, we can reach net zero. And there’s no platform more global than COP to have those exchanges, get that vital message across and get to work!
A great example of collaboration to the benefit of all is the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard (the Standard). A coalition of nine leading organisations including RIBA, with the support of hundreds of volunteers, developed the Standard – a single, robust methodology for defining the characteristics a building must meet to be considered ‘net zero aligned’ and in line with the nation’s carbon budget.
The Standard’s mandatory requirements for building performance and construction quality are ambitious but achievable. They cover a range of topics such as upfront carbon, operational energy use, avoidance of fossil fuel use on site, renewables and refrigerants. The Standard covers all major building sectors, from homes and offices to healthcare and logistics.
To date, the lack of a single, agreed-upon methodology to verify net zero carbon building has been a real issue, leading to a number of false net zero claims and making it difficult for those buying or leasing buildings to assess whether they are getting what they were promised. The Standard tackles that by providing an easy tool for anyone who wants to either fund, procure, design, or specify a net zero carbon aligned building, to inform overall decision making.
The collaboration of architects, engineers, carbon assessors, developers, and more to achieve this result shows that industry can and wants to make significant strides in addressing net zero. By turning words into action, we can drive forward the decarbonisation of the built environment.
The same is true for the decarbonisation of construction products and materials used in the built environment. As energy efficiency increases, there is a shift from just looking at the use phase for buildings to also including the construction phase in terms of carbon impact.
Thus, a key element to achieving net zero is to tackle embedded carbon by decarbonising the construction products and materials used to build.
VELUX has committed to halve its value chain carbon emissions by 2030 – an ambitious goal which, once again, is only viable to achieve through collaboration, not least with raw material suppliers. Commercial agreements for the supply of low carbon emission materials with suppliers of steel and aluminium are already in place, and alternatives for other materials are also being investigated. This is an important part of the roof window maker’s climate effort, but far from all.
For more than 25 years now, VELUX has gone beyond its products to also create full-scale prototypes on healthy and sustainable buildings – both new-build and renovation projects, for different types of buildings such as homes, schools and offices.
The latest project, Living Places, brings together a lot of the past experience in one project to prove that change is possible right now. Based on five key principles that can be applied to any home, community, or city, the aim was to create homes that are scalable, affordable, and commercially viable. The design plus each material and building technique were carefully considered to reduce environmental impact and improve human health. The result is a building prototype with a very low carbon footprint, and a superior indoor climate, made from readily available and competitively priced building materials.
To build it, contractors, engineers, architects, and other specialist experts were involved, pooling their talent and resources. This model for sustainable building will now be used by project home developers in Denmark and The Netherlands, with more countries and types of buildings on the way, built around the same core ideas.
While COP29 might not stand out for its big, concluding political headlines, for us, it provided another tangible step forward for the built environment. Buildings are now firmly on the COP agenda, not least after the Buildings Breakthrough was launched at COP28 last year, and the Chaillot declaration that followed in Paris in March, signed by 70 countries.
That allowed for more tangible discussions this year – on how to achieve decarbonisation, how to measure it, where to start, how to account for the growing need for resilience and adaptation also in Europe – and we had many fruitful discussions, adding our knowledge and experience to the mix, and picking up others’, too.
Therefore, we are optimistic about the outcome of COP29. Collaboration across sectors and the built environment supply chain is key, and fortunately this is happening in more and more structured ways. There is still a lot more to do however, and we are committed to do our part and to inspire others to follow, because we need to decarbonise our buildings, and we must do it now.
