Building carbon emissions hit an ALL-TIME high last year as COVID construction pause came to an end: spike in new construction jeopardizes 2050 climate goals, new UN report reveals
CO2 emissions hit a record high in 2021 as building construction fully recovered after the Covid lockdown break
High emissions jeopardize efforts to decarbonise by 2050, says United Nations
CO2 emissions accounted for about 37 percent of energy and process-related carbon emissions last year
“If we don’t cut emissions quickly in line with the Paris Agreement, we’ll be in bigger trouble,” said an official with the United Nations Environment Program.
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Carbon emissions hit an all-time high last year as construction recovered from Covid-induced lockdowns, jeopardizing efforts to decarbonize by 2050, according to a new United Nations report.
Despite a greater emphasis on energy efficiency and using less energy in the construction process, consumption and CO2 emissions have fully recovered from the pandemic silence.
The building and construction sector was responsible for 37 percent of energy and process-related carbon emissions worldwide by 2021, the UN Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction states.
“Years of warnings about the impacts of climate change have become reality,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “If we don’t quickly reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, we will be in even deeper trouble.”
CO2 emissions hit an all-time high last year as construction recovered from Covid-induced lockdowns. Above: JPMorgan Chase’s design for its new state-of-the-art global headquarters currently under construction at 270 Park Avenue in New York City
Despite a greater emphasis on energy efficiency and using less energy in the construction process, consumption and CO2 emissions have fully recovered from the pandemic silence. Above: A red crane stands in front of the Madison House condominium, center left, under construction at 15 East 30th Street in New York
Decarbonising buildings by 2050 is a critical goal and will entail many changes: improving the energy performance of buildings, reducing the environmental footprint of materials and increasing investment in energy efficiency. Above: Green energy and sustainable development of solar energy with the skyline of Shanghai bund panorama
‘The construction sector represents 40 percent of European energy demand, 80 percent of which comes from fossil fuels. This makes the sector an area for immediate action, investment and policy to advance energy security in the short and long term,” Andersen said in a statement. pronunciation.
Decarbonising buildings by 2050 is a critical goal and will entail many changes: improving the energy performance of buildings, reducing the environmental footprint of materials and increasing investment in energy efficiency.
The report describes the steps taken to control emissions.
Investments in building energy efficiency have risen at unprecedented levels, rising 16 percent in 2021 from 2020 levels to $237 billion.
Efforts of this kind are paying off in a sense, as the report notes that the sector’s emissions intensity in kilograms of CO2 per square meter has fallen from 43 in 2015 to 40 in 2021.
However, the incessant growth of the world is moving too fast to catch up.
“The increase in global gross floor area between 2015 and 2021 is the equivalent of the total land area with buildings in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands; if it were built on one level, about 24,000 square kilometers,” the report states.
The UN report also spotlights the need for alternative building materials in Africa, where raw resource use is expected to double by 2060. In addition, the population of that continent will reach 2.4 billion by 2050, with 80 percent of the growth taking place in cities.
One of the UN’s recommendations: National and sub-national governments should set mandatory energy codes for buildings; the construction and real estate sectors must commit to reducing their CO2 emissions throughout their value chain; governments should promote a shift to so-called ‘circular material economies’.
“The increase in global gross floor area between 2015 and 2021 is the equivalent of the total land area with buildings in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands; if it were built on one level, about 24,000 square kilometers,” the report states. Above: A view of high-rises and new construction in downtown Brooklyn – the area has seen a significant increase in new housing construction in recent years
One of the UN’s recommendations: National and sub-national governments should set mandatory energy codes for buildings. Above: Cranes stand at a construction site near China Evergrande Group’s headquarters in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China
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