Regardless of your view on whether anthropomorphic climate change is significant, building an dconstruction accounts for 39% of global carbon emissions, with operational emissions accounting for 28% of carbon produced on a daily basis.
Traditional building construction requires concrete, steel, aluminum, and glass. All of these materials require carbon in mining, production, and all aspects of the supply chain from source to destination.
Operational carbon is easily measured according to the energy used for a building to operate on a daily basis. Embodied carbon—the carbon used to gather and produce materials used in the construction process are harder to measure. Nevertheless, it’s estimated that embodied carbon accounts for 11% of global carbon emissions.
Even if climate change is a hoax, developing more energy-efficient techniques to produce building materials, and in the construction process, has many benefits. Most notably, more efficient processes are by nature less expensive than those that require the most energy.
Sovereign nations are not bound to the terms of the Paris Agreement. However, one could review its terms for inspiration.
