Global Alliance for Buildings & Construction to Fight Climate Change

Paris, FR, December 4, 2015—Eighteen countries (Austria, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Senegal, Singapore, Sweden, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States) and over 60 organizations have launched an unprecedented Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction to speed up and scale up the sector’s huge potential to reduce its emissions and literally build greater climate resilience into future cities and infrastructure.

The Alliance—which gathers organizations from countries to cities, non-governmental organizations, public and private organizations, networks of professionals, of cities, of companies as well as financing institutions—announced the initiative at the Lima to Paris Action Agenda Focus on Buildings in Paris.  

Among other members, the International Union of Architects now represents, through national architecture organizations, close to 1.3 million architects worldwide; the World Green Building Council represents 27,000 companies involved in green buildings business worldwide; the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors represents 180,000 building surveyors globally; the European Construction Industry Federation represents the construction sector employers through 33 national federations in 29 countries.

The buildings and construction sector is responsible for 30% of global CO2 emissions, but it also has the potential to avoid about 3.2GtCO2 by 2050 through mainstreaming today’s available state-of-the-art policies and technologies. Reducing energy demand in the building sector is one of the most cost-effective strategies for achieving significant greenhouse gas reductions.

In addition, the U.S. Green Building Council will commit to scaling green buildings to more than 5 billion square feet (478 million square meters) over the next five years through the LEED and EDGE green building rating systems.