Technological and financial tools to decarbonise the building sector and mitigate overheating in our cities

In the framework of The Trento EEMI Bauhaus Week, the European Mortgage Federation - European Covered Bond Council (EMF-ECBC) released a video-”call to action” (for distribution to 2000 banks and 5000 major companies) about the decarbonisation of buildings and the heat mitigation in cities.

In this video, Mat Santamouris, professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, and a member of the AIVC board, shares his insights and provides information about the severity of local climate warming and its serious impact on energy, health, vulnerability and human productivity in our cities. He presents ways to counterbalance overheating and proposes a new frame of financial and legislative policy tools to alleviate local climatic warming and cool our cities.

Despite the continuous growth of the building sector and the considerable technological advance, the sector faces very important challenges that affect human life (i.e., overpopulation – urbanization, urban overheating and regional climate change, high energy consumption).

Professor Mat Santamouris said: “Our cities and seriously overheated; there are 13000 overheated cities and 1.7 billion people living under severe overheating conditions…By 2030 the additional housing needs will grow by more than 77 million square meters of floor space equivalent or higher than the actual area of China, more than 225 billion square meters of floor area will be built in emerging economies and mainly in India Indonesia and Brazil. It is characteristic that we built a new Paris per week.”

“To satisfy the current climatic engagements, new buildings should present an almost zero energy consumption while protecting the residents from extreme climatic events, promote resilience and guarantee the health and well-being of the population.”

The current technological potential to mitigate the urban heat and adapt buildings and cities to the new climatic conditions is significant. The development of advanced mitigation technologies and the combination of very efficient energy conservation technologies with renewable sources can lead to cost efficient zero carbon buildings and settlements.

Moving towards urban climate change transition further involves the establishment of urban warming markets, a mandatory urban warming pricing and credit mechanism and a voluntary urban warming market development to boost sustainable urban investments.

Professor Santamouris concluded: “Investing and counterbalancing urban climatic change is the next productivity engine to drive growth”.

Watch the video here and share it with your contacts. It’s time to take action!