Dear readers. Apologies for the extended absence during which I have not been able to keep you posted on developments with the EEB project.
I was in Bali at the COP 13 meeting. As you probably know, “the Bali Roadmap” was finally agreed despite the strong positions taken by the US and India in particular not wanting targets on emission reductions. My take is that:
- Climate change is now a real global issue. All countries, developed as well as developing countries, form a global community, that know they have to confront the issue.
- Climate change and development are fully linked to each other.
- Business inputs are needed all along the “Bali Roadmap”. Business can advise policy makers on what will make economic as well as commercial sense.
- Industry sectoral approaches will have to be part of policy solutions and the issue of buildings will be central.
The most memorable statement was made by Mr. Tanaka, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA). He showed great courage. At the WBCSD business day, he presented the dark facts of where we were heading, along the business-as-usual curve with fast increasing emissions levels. Then Mr. Tanaka added his alternative scenario curve to the graph, which bent downwards nicely over time and gave us all hope. Then he said:”If you believe in the alternative scenario then you have to believe in science fiction”. His words swept over the audience like a very cold wind.
Back to Paris and the EEB project….
The second phase of the project has already started with our workstream on scenarios. We have held workshops in the US (at DuPont), in Europe (at Philips) and in Japan (at TEPCO) during autumn. We are planning further workshops in India (together with TERI) and in China (with Tsingua University in Beijing ).
To kick-start the other two workstreams, Core Group companies met in Paris at Lafarge in middle of January. Constant Van Aerschot from Lafarge heads the policy workstream. He says the EEB policy work starts where UNEP ended.”(See the UNEP report which gives a very good generic description of different policy options). The Policy workstream will, in particular, examine the result of the French “Grenelle” as regards the building sector, with 44 drafted policy recommendations.
The policy workstream should also bridge the result of the scenario work into concrete policy implications for the modeling workstream.
The EEB project has chosen to make both a top-down and bottom-up approach to analyze how the building industry will need to change to reach zero net energy consumption. The latter is the main focus of the modeling (WS).
The modeling workstream, headed by Bill Sisson from UTC, is developing a quantitative model that will allow the EEB to measure the impact of different policies. Four Universities, Carnegie Mellow in Pittsburgh (US), Lund University (EU), Mesra Institute of Technology (India) and Tsingha University (China), together with EEB member companies, are currently collecting building data covering defined submarkets worldwide. This work will give the EEB project a unique global database.
Our objective is to be able to produce a report in autumn with recommendations based on robust information on the global building sector and its many submarkets.
I will keep you posted.
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