The building sector should be central to any attempt to use resources more efficiently. Buildings consume a large proportion of the global energy supply but opportunities to improve efficiency are huge and the sector has the greatest potential – more than any other covered in this report – to reduce global GHG emissions. Great gains can also be achieved from a broader, more holistic approach to buildings; a life-cycle perspective that covers each stage from the building design and the extraction of resources to construction and usage and through to disuse and eventual demolition and the recycling or disposal of the building materials. The most significant environmental impact of buildings lies in their energy demand over decades or even centuries of use. As a result, the design and use of energy efficient buildings has a key part to play in mitigating climate change and the transformation to a global green economy.
Whether construction of new or retrofitting existing buildings, they both offer a high GHG reduction potential and environmental benefits at low cost.
Patterns of energy consumption and emissions, as well as the predicted future trends, vary widely across the developed and developing world. Major regions of the world need to pursue green building strategies that are appropriate to their respective circumstances. For developed countries, which account for most of the existing building stock, the priority is to put in place measures and incentives that will enable large-scale investments in retrofitting programmes. Those will come not only with the benefits of energy savings but also a high potential of net job creation. For developing countries, particularly fast-growing economies that are experiencing a construction boom, the priority is to ensure that new buildings will be green by investing in the most appropriate available technology, whether traditional or high-tech, and design options and avoiding any possible lock-in to an inefficient building stock with long-term consequences.
In both cases, retrofitting and new construction, pay- back periods of investments in energy efficiency are reasonably short and they offer a significant return on investment in the medium- and long-term. On a global scale, aggregated investments in energy efficiency in buildings pay back two fold in energy savings over 20 years. These savings are, in most cases, sufficient to justify investments in greening, beyond the positive externalities associated with mitigating climate change. Greening also brings the opportunity to improve efficiency in use of water, materials and land, and avoid
risks associated with climate change and hazardous substances.
The process of greening buildings and their subsequent use provides a wide range of direct social benefits, including the improved health, productivity and wellbeing of those who live and work in them and the creation of jobs in construction, maintenance and the supply of energy, water and sanitation.
The increase in the productivity of employees working in green buildings can yield labour-cost savings that may be higher than energy-cost savings, which are themselves substantial. The construction of new, green buildings, retrofitting and accompanied use of resource- efficient construction materials, products and energy supply and maintenance can provide net jobs gains and decent work. While the construction industry in many countries has a poor image with respect to meeting workers’ rights, green building offers an opportunity to use improved training, skills management and inspection to improve the quality of employment.
Improved health and quality-of-life benefits of green buildings
are equally significant. In developing
communities, where most household energy is used for cooking, more efficient appliances (cleaner stoves) can bring extensive economic benefits in the form of reduced health-related expenditure as a result of less illness, associated productivity gains and time-savings. The benefits of simple measures, such as replacing solid fuels with electricity in informal and low-cost housing, are particularly striking when considering the devastating health impacts of indoor air pollution on women and children.
Improved regulation and control, adjusting energy prices to internalise external costs and other policy instruments such as tax exemptions and grants are required to overcome persistent barriers such as market failure and non-cost reflective energy prices in particular:
Despite these opportunities, investment in green buildings is held back owing to assumed cost premiums that are exaggerated and a range of barriers that range from financial constraints to the fragmented structure of the industry. While some barriers relate to hidden costs or benefits and market failure, others relate to behavioral culture, lack of awareness and capacity.
Seeking to address these and create an enabling environment, governments need to take stock and 369