BARCELONA, Spain — In this Mediterranean port city where Antoni Gaudi’s surreal architectural masterpieces have forever altered the skyline and raised expectations, an international gathering of sustainable building experts has plotted changes to the world’s built landscape that could be as revolutionary and even more transformational.
Meeting in the architectural shadow of Gaudi’s inimitable Sagrada Familia church, a parade of presenters and leaders at the World Sustainable Building Conference called for an urgent and widely replicable “green building” response to a looming world housing crisis that has potentially grave impacts on climate change.
“This is like the Kyoto for building, and the building sector for Kyoto,” said Antonio Lucio Gil, the conference’s global vision chair, referring to the 1997 conference in Japan that set global greenhouse gas reduction goals.
“We have an obligation to think about the future because something is happening with the climate and we have to be ready,” said Mr. Gil. “Over the long term, we must get acceptance for sustainable building practices in the marketplace and among political leaders. We need to talk about the needs of developing countries.”
The building sector worldwide now accounts for approximately one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption and waste generation, according to the “Barcelona Manifesto,” a document produced by conference organizers that challenges nations, architects, construction companies, the building trades and researchers to move quickly and comprehensively to use sustainable construction practices to build energy-efficient structures.
The manifesto, released when the conference closed 10 days ago, sets an admittedly ambitious carbon emissions reduction target of 77 percent.
Albert Cuchi, president of the conference, said fast action is necessary because projections show world population could increase from 7.2 billion to 9.6 billion people over the next 40 years, and they’ll all need housing.
The vast majority of population growth will occur in urban areas, Mr. Cuchi said, including some cities that have not yet been built. And the demand for housing and non-residential buildings, as well as the need for resources to build those structures, will expand dramatically, especially in China, India, a handful of African nations and, due to immigration, the U.S.
And the need for new and improved housing is already acute. An estimated 3 billion people — 42 percent of the world’s population — are living in slum dwellings.
If the needed structures are built using unsustainable, traditional construction materials and are not energy efficient, Mr. Cuchi said, they will be a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change.
“Following our current tendencies, by 2050 the building sector will be responsible for producing all the global emissions allowed under the scenario that would limit global warming to 2 degrees Centigrade,” he said. “The building sector must reduce its environmental demands, improve our energy efficiency and reduce the use of fossil fuels by 50 percent.”
‘A dangerous place to be’
But for all its successes, including a multitude of built developments and expanded architectural influence, public acceptance of green building development as a tool with economic value or a weapon against climate change has lagged.
Prashant Kapoor, a climate business specialist at the World Bank, said the bank recognizes the housing needs and climate change risks faced by many developing nations, and is already investing $11.3 billion annually in climate-related residential development.
“We’re looking at the possibility of 250 million people moving into cities in China just the next decade. We know that 70 percent of what will be needed in India has yet to be built,” said Mr. Kapoor. “When that kicks in, it’s going to be a dangerous place to be. The folks on the high end will be OK but construction is not moving fast enough for those on the low end and in the middle is not moving fast enough.”
He said the World Bank is using its financing policies to maximize sustainable construction.
“Our target is to get 20 percent of the construction in these markets to go green in five to seven years and still recognize local conditions,” Mr. Kapoor said. “In India, we know air conditioning is coming and we can’t ask them not to get air conditioning. Be we can build and insulate so that even if they put in a window unit, it can operate 20 percent better.”
Stephan Kohler, general director of Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH, the German Energy Agency, agreed that the building sector must be a big part of any global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption.
“We need energy and building materials reduction outcomes that can be taken to nations,” he said. “We need to make good economic and business cases so we can have a transformative impact and the building sector can be a leader.”
In some ways the opportunity to do so has never been greater, Mr. Kohler said, because more governments understand the need for sustainable building and construction policies that can help manage materials, energy and resources.
He said governments can, and are, taking a leadership role by mandating sustainable energy and building design for public structures — public schools, universities and government buildings and facilities.
Jane Henley, CEO of the World Green Building Council, said that the number of national councils now tops 100, with 27,000 member companies. But challenges abound and the window of opportunity to change public attitudes toward building practices and energy efficiencies is closing rapidly.
“We’re working at walking companies a little further down the sustainability road than they would travel on their own,” Ms. Henley said. “But working with the public and building public demand is our biggest challenge.
“Americans care about energy efficiency for four minutes a year when they read their heating bills. It’s just not a situation where we have that broader consciousness. It’s scaling up, but we’re not there yet.”
Roger Platt, president of the U.S. Green Building Council, which administers the widely used, voluntary, LEED building rating system, said national, state and local government mandates and policies are needed to move sustainable building to the next level.
“Green building standards can raise construction to the levels we want to see accomplished,” Mr. Platt said. “But most of the green building projects to date have been demonstration projects. That’s not the same as government mandates. The projects have an impact on the market but are not a substitute for mandates in construction.”
He noted that in the U.S. over the last 14 years, 650 green building policies have been adopted, and there are more than 200,000 licensed green building architects, contractors and builders..
Raymond Cole, the conference keynote speaker and a professor and former director of the School of Architecture at the University of British Columbia, said sustainability advocates must build on the progress achieved over the last 25 years by expanding their focus to affect change on an urban and global scale, and improving their message to gain public acceptance.
He said planners “need to look at cities as agents of climate change” because that is where much of the future population growth will occur. And the greatest opportunity to change public perceptions and acceptance for sustainable development, he said, is in urban neighborhoods, where people live, relate, play and recreate.
“We’ve been talking about limits to growth, green buildings and sustainable development but that hasn’t been sufficiently motivating to the public, especially when our ecological response is compromised by economic, military and social actions,” Mr. Cole said. “In the past we’ve been talking about doing less bad. And now we want to do good.”
Correction, posted Nov. 11, 2014: An earlier version of this story misidentified the country into whose cities 250 million people are expected to move during the next decade.
Correction, posted Nov. 11, 2014: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the amount World Bank Group is annually investing in climate-related residential development.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
First Published: November 9, 2014, 5:00 a.m.
