Meeting the 1.5ºC Paris Agreement Targets in the Global Built Environment
We are in a race to find solutions to both the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis. With heartbreaking clarity, the danger of inaction against known threats can lead to terrible human suffering, and declining economic and environmental well-being. With the abrupt but temporary disruption in building and infrastructure construction due to the pandemic, this crucial moment provides us an extraordinary opportunity to reassess and RESET our priorities and actions for the built environment.
It’s clear we can grow our economies, create and support livable communities, and phase-out fossil fuels to solve the climate crisis. Now is the time to collectively accelerate our motivation and actions – designing buildings with no on-site fossil fuels; innovating and shifting to carbon positive buildings, materials, construction and infrastructure; creating building decarbonization and clean energy jobs; integrating passive design strategies and renewable energy in projects; and addressing the root causes of increasing and projected climate catastrophes and pandemics. The world will certainly be better equipped to confront potential disasters if we readily and immediately share resources, expertise, and information.
As it now stands, we can still retain a high probability of meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target and avert the most dangerous aspects of climate change by reducing annual CO2 emissions 50% to 65% in the built environment by 2030, and completely phasing-out of fossil fuel CO2 emissions by 2040.
With buildings and infrastructure responsible for well over half of all annual global emissions, the international architecture, engineering, construction, planning, and building community must play a key role in meeting the 1.5°C target. Actions and support from this group are crucial. As economies emerge from the global pandemic and building and infrastructure construction recover, sector actions will send a strong market signal and give governments the confidence to act in line with the remaining global carbon budget.
Architecture 2030, with other key partners, is presenting a 1.5°C Global Teach-In to promote and advance the actions needed by the global building community to meet the 1.5°C carbon budget.
There has never been a greater urgency for climate action.
CarbonPositive provides a “how-to” for planning, designing, building and manufacturing a CarbonPositive future – where buildings, developments and entire cities are constructed to use sustainable resources, generate surplus renewable energy, and convert atmospheric carbon into durable materials and products.
To meet this challenge, sessions, speakers and exhibitors will showcase in-depth:
Innovative materials and advanced construction methods
Latest design tools and best practices
Leading edge policy efforts and planning practices