COP21 – Buildings Day – 3rd December 2015

Yves-Laurent Sapoval announced, at the International Green Building Conference in Singapore this week, that there will be a day dedicated to addressing the impact that buildings have on climate change at this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris.  On the 3rd December the focus will be on the contribution that buildings play in the generation of green house gases, and how to address this.

One of the talks, I forget which but think it may have been Terri Wills, indicated that current forecasts are that another five USA’s worth of buildings are yet to be built, and that the majority of buildings that will be built in India by 2050 are not yet in existence.  Similar stats would exist for other developing countries.  China is reportedly building 50+ storey buildings in 19 days.  The emissions resulting from buildings are therefore only going up, and the role of greening how buildings are designed, built and operated is naturally of enormous importance.

One of the questions that was raised in a session focusing on regional green buildings related to the real impact that greening of buildings could possibly be having, considering that any savings of 10 or even 20% would be negated by building multiple more buildings.  The answer from Sean Quinn of 10 Design was that if anyone had figured out the answer to that question, they’d be a multi-millionaire.  It speaks to the real challenge that exists.  The greening of buildings can only do so much in the face of mass-developments.

Hopefully the buildings day to be held at COP21 will help to identify some actions to mitigate the impact that buildings have.  Another ‘watch this space’ point.