IT’S NOW OR NOW

BY EDWARD MAZRIA

The road to zero emissions and transforming the global built environment to keep 1.5 degrees C alive while addressing the most pressing issues of our time: urbanization, energy, and climate change.

There’s an old saying in the U.S. by famous New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra: If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else. So where are we going, and how do we get there?

We are now at 1°C and beginning to see the dramatic effects of climate change. By 2040, the world population is expected to increase by 1.34 billion, and the world urban population is expected to increase by 1.4 billion. Urbanization will absorb the entire population growth estimate between now and 2040. In the U.S., 83% of our population, or 279 million people, live in cities. That’s expected to increase to 87% by 2040 and 90% by 2050. We know that urban environments are responsible for 72% of all human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that attributed to its buildings. To reduce urban emissions, we must address the entire building sector—building operations, construction materials and site work, and associated infrastructure.

In the U.S., prior to 2005, building sector floor area, operating energy use, and CO2 emissions increased in tandem. It makes sense. As we added to our building stock, sector energy consumption and emissions went up. This has been happening since the Industrial Revolution.

From 2005 to 2021, something extraordinary happened. As governments and building sector professionals were alerted to the fact that buildings were responsible for a large portion of U.S. CO2 emissions, building sector floor area continued to increase, but energy use didn’t go up, and greenhouse gas emissions went down 26.6% from 2005 levels. This decoupling of energy consumption and emissions from growth is unprecedented in modern U.S. history. We are now beginning to see a similar decoupling in the global building sector.

Today, over 70% of the electricity generated in the U.S. goes to operate buildings; globally, the percentage is nearly 55%. Utility-scale solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest options for new electricity generation in the U.S. and much of the world. In 2020, renewable power was the only energy source for which demand increased, while the consumption of all other fossil fuels declined. Renewables are expected to keep growing dramatically. Today, about 40% of the electricity generated in the U.S. and worldwide is non-CO2 emitting, and that percentage is expected to grow each year for the foreseeable future.

Can we meet the 1.5°C target set out in the Paris Climate Agreement? Yes, but we must rapidly accelerate decarbonizing new buildings, existing buildings, and the embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure. To accomplish this, all new buildings and major renovations must be designed to high-efficiency standards, use no on-site fossil fuels, and the energy used must be on-site renewables and/or off-site renewable electricity. The 2030 Palette (2030palette.org) provides the strategies needed to plan and design to zero carbon— everything from regional, city, town, and district planning strategies to transportation, site work, and construction materials.

We also know that by 2040, two-thirds or more of today’s buildings will still be in use. A small percentage of very large buildings in a city—1.5% to 5% of the building stock—are responsible for about half of a city’s buildings’ emissions. To address these buildings, policies with incentives (e.g., fast-track permitting, low-interest loans, tax abatements, on-bill financing, and efficient equipment rebates) should be enacted that require them to get to zero carbon by 2030.

For the smaller buildings that make up a vast majority of the total building stock in a city, zero carbon policies that achieve decarbonization no later than 2040 should be enacted with incentives at building intervention points (e.g., point-of-sale, zoning or use change, or a major renovation).

Coupling decarbonization upgrades with these and other building interventions can make it more cost-effective to electrify, increase energy efficiency, and incorporate

Edward Mazria Founder & CEO, Architecture 2030 Santa Fe, New Mexico renewable energy systems.

Edward Mazria is a renowned architect, author, researcher, and educator whose seminal research into urbanization, climate change, sustainability, and energy in the built environment has redefined and dramatically expanded the role of architecture, planning, design, and building in reshaping our world. He is the founder and CEO of Architecture 2030, a think tank developing real-world solutions for 21st-century problems. He has garnered numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement from the National Council for Science & the Environment, World Green Building Council Chairman’s Award, Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization’s 2021 President’s Award, and the 2021 AIA Gold Medal for his “unwavering voice and leadership” in the fight against climate change.

The embodied carbon emissions from building materials, construction, and site infrastructure are responsible for about half of the carbon footprint of new structures over their lifespan. These emissions can be dramatically reduced through regulations, zoning, land use, incentives, and procurement policies, including requiring construction within a zoning designation to meet embodied carbon requirements, requiring life-cycle embodied carbon limits that define the maximum carbon impact of a new project, and setting fixed carbon limits for key construction materials such as concrete, steel, bricks, glass, gypsum board, and insulation.

It’s now or now. By enacting policies, regulations, and incentives, cities and local governments have a unique opportunity to accelerate the development of sustainable, resilient, and equitable zero-carbon buildings and communities both in the U.S. and globally.