Paris / Nairobi, 2 August 2011 - Efforts
to establish international standards for
measuring energy use in buildings have received
a boost, after the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) decided to consider
an innovative tool developed by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to
gauge energy consumption and CO2 emissions
in homes and offices across the world.
The Common Carbon Metric
(CCM) - developed by UNEP's Sustainable
Buildings and Climate Initiative - could
form the basis for a new international standard
for measuring the environmental performance
of existing buildings. The ISO - the world's
largest developer and publisher of international
standards, covering 162 countries - will
develop relevant methods.
The Common Carbon Metric
is intended to create a uniform system for
defining the climate impact of buildings
through a consistent protocol, which can,
in turn, help develop international baselines
for use by architects, designers and the
construction industry.
Today, the building
sector is the single largest contributor
to greenhouse gas emissions with about one
third of global energy use taking place
in offices and homes. Moreover, building-related
CO2 emissions are set to rise from 8.6 billion
tones in 2004 to 11.1 billion tones in 2020.
"At UNEP we believe
there is great potential for the building
sector to contribute to significant reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions," said
Sylvie Lemmet, Director of UNEP's Division
of Technology, Industry and Economics. "Development
of the Common Carbon Metric and the ISO's
decision to consider it as an international
standard are important steps to remove the
barriers to unlock this potential and provide
a path to more energy efficiency in the
building sector."
Developing new standards
for buildings can help governments plan
more effectively towards achieving national
targets on sustainability and reducing carbon
emissions. The Common Carbon Metric can
also support the formulation of carbon credit
schemes and other emission reduction mechanisms.
The CCM is specifically
designed to measure energy use when a building
is operational. In other words, it is not
applied to the construction phase. However,
given that the day-to-day use of buildings
accounts for 80%to 90% of their total energy
consumption, the Common Carbon Metric deals
with the period in a building's lifespan
where the greatest amount of emissions are
produced. First launched during the UN Climate
Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009,
UNEP's Common Carbon Metric measures both
energy use and greenhouse gas emissions
equivalent in buildings per metre squared
or per occupant over the course of one year.
It contains two approaches: a "top-down"
model, which takes measurements from a collection
of buildings or a "bottom-up"
model, which is applied to an individual
building.
After initial tests
by the UNEP Sustainable Buildings and Climate
Initiative in 2010, the Common Carbon Metric
was further refined and a second phase of
testing has started recently, with preliminary
results to be presented in October.
The CCM is intended
for worldwide use, including developing
countries, where limitations on data collection
and infrastructure may not support current
methods for measuring energy use and emission
levels during the entire life cycle of a
building.
Professor Tomonari Yashiro,
Professor at the Institute of Industrial
Sciences of the University of Tokyo, proposed
the CCM to the International Organization
for Standardization, and serves as convener
of the working group that will prepare the
draft standard.
"Sustainability-related
standardization is one of the most significant
issues in current ISO strategies,"
Yashiro said. "There exist serious
and urgent needs to establish international
consensus on globally applicable common
method of measuring operational energy use
in existing buildings and to report the
associated greenhouse gas emissions from
such operations. I hope the standardization
by ISO will facilitate diffusion of CCM
to many areas of business."
The proposal to use
CCM as the basis for new international standards
for buildings will be put on the agenda
of ISO members within a year. If appropriate,
new draft international standards will then
be prepared on energy consumption and CO2
emissions which, when finalized, could be
adopted within three years.
