Three major global businesses have backed the World Green Building Council’s ambitious long-term target to ensure that all buildings are net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as official sponsors of the Advancing Net Zero project.
     Engineering firm Integral Group, international property and infrastructure group Lendlease and the product manufacturer the Rockwool Group have all joined the groundbreaking project, which aims for every single building – both new and existing – to operate at zero carbon emissions by 2050, or sooner.
     They are joined by the new funder Blackstone Ranch Institute, which supports high impact environmental projects that seek change on an international scale. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and ClimateWorks Foundation have also previously supported the project.
     Advancing Net Zero launched in June 2016 and calls upon national Green Building Councils which own or operate certification schemes to introduce or adopt a net zero certification scheme for their market, with a pilot version ready for January 2018. As of today, 11 Green Building Councils are participating in the project, including countries with some of the largest and fastest growing building markets.
     Additional Green Building Councils in the WorldGBC network, including those who do not operate certification programmes in their market, will be participating in other aspects of the global project throughout 2017.
     The goal to achieve a net zero emissions global building stock by 2050 is the means by which the building sector will help to deliver on the Paris Agreement, forged at COP21 in December 2015. It was in Paris that WorldGBC, its 74 Green Building Councils and their 32,000 member companies committed to reduce CO2 emissions from buildings by 84 gigatonnes by 2050 – what the International Energy Agency say is needed from the sector to keep global temperature rises to within 2 degrees.
     WorldGBC will publish a report in Spring 2017 highlighting the specific actions businesses, governments and NGOs (including Green Building Councils) must take in order to achieve 100 per cent net zero buildings by 2050.