Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist

By Stephen Leahy

Mar 13 (IPS) – Making buildings more environmentally friendly is the easiest and most effective way to cut climate-changing carbon emissions, often slashing energy costs by up to 70 percent.

So why isn’t there a massive effort to “green up” existing buildings and set green standards for all new construction?

North America’s buildings are responsible for a staggering 2,200 megatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions — 35 percent of the continent’s annual total. A new report released Thursday says a rapid uptake of currently available and emerging advanced energy-saving technologies could slash emissions by 1,700 megatonnes (MT) of CO2 emissions by 2030.

A cut of that size would nearly equal the CO2 emitted by the entire U.S. transportation sector in 2000.

“Improving our built environment is probably the single greatest opportunity to protect and enhance the natural environment,” said Adrián Vázquez, executive director of the tri-national Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) that produced the report, “Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges”.

Examples of green building strategies include energy efficient appliances, solar panels, ample windows that eliminate the need for electric light during daytime hours, and rooftop gardens that cool in the summer and insulate in the winter.

“Green building represents some of the ripest ‘low-hanging fruit’ for achieving significant reductions in climate change emissions,” Vázquez told IPS.

Buildings are the proverbial elephant in the room in terms of energy and resource use, according to the report. In the U.S., they devoured 40 percent of all energy, with 1.24 million new single family homes being built every year. In Canada, buildings are responsible for 50 percent of all natural resources used. In Mexico, they use 25 percent of all electricity and produce 20 percent of the country’s waste.

The most efficient buildings today use about 70 percent less energy than conventional properties. Despite proven environmental, economic and health benefits, however, green building accounts for a only small fraction of new homes and commercial buildings — just two percent of the new non-residential building market, less than half of one percent of the residential market in the United States and Canada, and even less than that in Mexico.

It would seem that energy costs aren’t high enough. Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies paid to the energy sector lowers the actual cost of energy, and tilts the market away from green buildings towards the cheapest built structures.

For full article please see Emissions Solutions Start at Home