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20 / BUILDING DIALOGUE / June 2020 Mohit Mehta, LEED AP BD+C Principal/ Building Performance Director, ME Engineers It’s All About the Carbon Our New Normal: How Does the Building Industry Step Up? T his is the last article in the series: It’s All About the Carbon. Let us recap key takeaways so far: Climate change : It’s time for the building community to move to the front line. The building industry is the leading cause of CO2 emissions, which are rising year after year cor- responding to warmer global surface tempera- tures. Let’s talk net zero: preparing for evolving code. Building energy codes in Colorado, especially cit- ies along the Front Range are moving toward zero net energy within the next 10 to 15 years (i.e., four to five code releases away). Embodied carbon: rising contributor of atmo- spheric CO2. It’s time to pay equal attention to em- bodied carbon as we do operational energy in our buildings and that means where these materials are sourced. When we talk about carbon, it’s not restricted to the confines of Colorado, the U.S. or North Ameri- ca – it has global implications. The health of the people is intimately connected to the health of wildlife, the health of livestock and the health of the environment, as we well know in Colorado. It is one health. The global COVID-19 pandem- ic is set to cause the largest ever annual drop in CO2 emissions. While this is an unintended benefit of these unprecedent- ed times – a formi- dable and evolving health crisis with an unknown date – it is not how we will sustainably address climate change. CO2 emissions will quickly rebound, unless the re- sponse to the pandemic can create lasting, struc- tural changes toward net-ze- ro emissions: telecommuting being one. The global health crisis we find our- selves in should lead to a deeper understanding of the ties that bind our industry on a global scale. It has forced us to dramatically change our behavior in order to protect ourselves and those around us, to a de- gree most of us have never experienced before. Even though climate change presents a slower, more long-term health threat, an equally dramatic and sustained shift in behavior will be needed to pre- vent irreversible damage. Are we in the design and construction indus- tries mindful enough to enact a shift in how we think about, plan for, design, specify, construct and operate our buildings and communities? The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 by 189 coun- tries responsible for nearly 99% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, committed each country to reduce emissions over the next 10 to 30 years. Limiting warming to 1.5°C above prein- dustrial levels by 2100 means that the emissions of GHG’s need to be reduced rapidly in the coming years and brought to zero around midcentury. The building and construction sector should be a primary target for GHG emissions mitigation ef- forts, as it accounted for almost 40% of energy- and process-related emissions in 2018 globally (Fig: 1), whereas the U.S. the building sector is responsible for almost 45% of our total CO2 emissions. Since the building sector is a major culprit, Figure 1: Global share of buildings and construction emissions, 2018. Construction industry is the portion (estimated) of overall industry devoted to manufacturing building construction materials such as steel, cement and glass. Indirect emissions are emissions from power generation for electricity and commercial heat. Source: 2019 Global Status Report.