Global management consulting firm McKinsey has launched the Net Zero Built Environment Council, a cross sector coalition of industry stakeholders aiming to decarbonise the built world.
The council’s chief goal is to collaboratively create new pathways to cut greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.
The council will support stakeholders to create and commercialise new green innovations, create global sustainability metrics and research, and promote cost-effective pathways to “decarbonising everything from construction methods to materials,” according to McKinsey.
The council will work to align siloed supply chains, construction projects and markets, and help industry players tap into an estimated $800 billion to $1.9 trillion in potential green markets.
The launch of the Net Zero Built Environment Council comes alongside the release of a new McKinsey report that identifies a lack of collaboration within the built environment ecosystem as a key obstacle to decarbonisation.
“Our analysis shows that over the life cycle of a typical building, 76 per cent of emissions come from operations and the remaining 24 per cent from the processing of raw materials used for and construction of new builds,” the report said.
“Given that 80 per cent of the predicted building stock for 2050 exists today, it stands to reason that the built environment will need to decarbonise not only embodied emissions but also, more importantly, the operational emissions from the existing building stock.”
Given that a significant portion of emissions in the built environment stem from operations of existing building stock, lowering these emissions is a key priority.
The primary sources driving these operational emissions are heating and cooling. Indirect emissions (from power generation for electricity and commercial heat) constitute 50 per cent of the global built environment’s emissions.
There are two important factors to consider when decreasing emissions from the operations of existing buildings: the energy source used for heating and the energy efficiency of the building.
“Key pathways to address these two factors could be upgrading energy and improving insulation,” the report said.
“This includes switching to renewable sources for heat pumps and leveraging new technologies such as combined heat and power, infrared heating boards, and hydrogen boilers.”