Global management consulting firm McKinsey recently launched the Net Zero Built Environment Council, a cross-sector coalition of industry stakeholders aiming to decarbonize 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 commercialize new green innovations, create global sustainability metrics and research, and promote cost-effective pathways to “decarbonizing 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 decarbonization.
McKinsey’s research found that 76% of emissions from an average building are caused by operations, demonstrating a need for collaborative decarbonization across the entire built environment life cycle, not just during construction.
The report found that half of all emissions across the built environment could be eliminated with little extra cost, while 20% will be more costly and complex to decarbonize, such as cement and steel, requiring more industry partnerships to reduce costs and risks for all new materials and technologies.
3 goals of the Net Zero Built Environment Council
To help facilitate the critical elements for change, we are launching the Net Zero Built Environment Council, which brings together many of the leading incumbents and new scale-ups across the built-environment ecosystem. Along the lines of the three ingredients covered in this article, the council’s ambitions can help with the following actions:
- Create transparency. Establish a fact-based perspective on a possible cost-effective recipe (translate the most powerful technology and other levers into a simplified playbook that applies to major building archetypes).
- Raise awareness of what is doable. Remove perceived barriers to decarbonization, capture the interest of decision makers, and spur “positive pressure” and acceleration to act.
- Stimulate partnerships and encourage initiative. Enable execution via innovative financial models, deployment of technologies, and scaling of efforts by bringing together stakeholders from across the built environment, whether by jointly commercializing technologies at scale or by identifying and creating lighthouse projects.
All contributors along the value chain must come together to overcome systematic challenges and increase transparency on cost-effective pathways to reach decarbonization goals and spread awareness to the entire sector. In this sense, the Net Zero Built Environment Council represents an important step forward in uniting industries and sectors—not only to achieve their climate ambitions but also to create green growth in the built environment.
Related Stories
| May 31, 2013
Nation's first retrofitted zero-energy building opens in California
The new training facility for IBEW/NECA is the first commercial building retrofit designed to meet the U.S. Department of Energy’s requirements for a net-zero energy building.
| May 17, 2013
LEED v4 has provision to reduce water use in cooling towers
The next version of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED rating system will expand water-savings targets to appliances, cooling towers, commercial kitchen equipment, and other areas.
| May 14, 2013
Paints and coatings: The latest trends in sustainability
When it comes to durability, a 50-year building design ideally should include 50-year coatings. Many building products consume substantial amounts of energy, water, and petrochemicals during manufacture, but they can make up for it in the operations phase. The same should be expected from architectural coatings.
| May 9, 2013
10 high-efficiency plumbing fixtures
From a "no sweat" toilet to a deep-well lavatory, here's a round up of the latest high-efficiency plumbing fixtures.
| May 9, 2013
Post-tornado Greensburg, Kan., leads world in LEED-certified buildings per capita
Six years after a tornado virtually wiped out the town, Greensburg, Kan., is the world's leading community in LEED-certified buildings per capita.
| May 3, 2013
'LEED for all GSA buildings,' says GSA Green Building Advisory Committee
The Green Building Advisory Committee established by the General Services Administration, officially recommended to GSA that the LEED green building certification system be used for all GSA buildings as the best measure of building efficiency.
| Apr 25, 2013
Colorado State University, DLR Group team to study 12 high-performance schools
DLR Group and the Institute for the Built Environment at Colorado State University have collaborated on a research project to evaluate the effect of green school design on occupants and long-term building performance.
| Apr 24, 2013
North Carolina bill would ban green rating systems that put state lumber industry at disadvantage
North Carolina lawmakers have introduced state legislation that would restrict the use of national green building rating programs, including LEED, on public projects.
| Apr 22, 2013
Top 10 green building projects for 2013 [slideshow]
The AIA's Committee on the Environment selected its top ten examples of sustainable architecture and green design solutions that protect and enhance the environment.
