AIA, NYC and the US on Climate

Data show that the building sector generally contributes around 40% of global CO2 emissions, and in cities that number is around 70%. The AIA, which has embraced the 2030 Challenge, and turned it into the 2030 Commitment issued the AIA Climate Action Plan this past summer. I would like to call attention to these initiatives now, at the start of the new year, but most importantly at the start of a new administration which could help win the fight against climate change. The areas the AIA Climate Action Plan focuses on are Energy, Materials, Design and Health, and Resilience, all of which align with measures in the AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence, a resource that every architect ought to be familiar with.

Influential management guru Peter Drucker famously said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”, which is one of the main goals of the 2030 commitment. The Urban Green Council just issued New York City’s Energy and Water Use Report, which constitutes a colossal effort over the past decade that aimed to benchmark the city’s largest buildings (over 50,000 sf). Midsize buildings (25,000-50,000 sf) were added in 2017. The benchmarking was used to influence the Climate Mobilization Act and in particular Local Law 97 of 2019, which refers to the fines building owners will incur after 2024 based on their CO2 emissions, and Local Law 95 of 2019, which mandates building grades and has already come into effect. You can view a graphic representation of the results of the report from 2011 to 2017 on this page via the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.

On January 26 at 1:00 pm the Urban Green Council is presenting the NYC Energy and Water Use Report and the Building Energy Exchange is offering a primer on the Climate Mobilization Act, which I will be presenting. You can sign up for the Urban Green Council event (Energy and Water Use Report) here and at the Building Energy Exchange event (Climate Mobilization Act) here.

These initiatives are not exclusive to New York. We have seen numerous cities in the US taking positive steps toward mitigating the effects of climate change. The city of Boston released the Carbon Free Boston report in 2019, a framework for making the city carbon-neutral by 2050. Boston is also part of the steering committee at C40 Cities, an organization New York City is also part of. Recently Boston has begun laying plans to require newly constructed buildings over 50,000 sf to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. This new amendment would be a big step toward achieving their 2050 goal.

I would like to close out the newsletter this week with some fun articles with neat, high-performing projects from around the world. Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission called for a new Bauhaus movement for Europe that would blend design and sustainability. Bloomberg Green invited three architects to imagine the Dream Homes of Europe’s Green Future; these highly conceptual projects are certainly worth drawing inspiration from. Examples of built work which blend tenant health concerns, energy efficiency, and thoughtfully lay into the cityscape can be found by a Passivehouse townhouse in Brooklyn, a zero energy and zero carbon certified mass timber building for Washington University in Spokane, and a Passivehouse building for Monash University in Melbourne.

Of course, perhaps the most positive news of the day is that as of a few hours ago, the US has committed to get back into the Paris Climate agreement. The new administration has also cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline project and ordered federal agencies to start reviewing and reinstating more than 100 environmental regulations that were rolled back under the previous administration. This is a very hopeful first step and we look forward to new regulations imposed and more funding allocated towards a greener economy.