Feature image: The LEED Zero Energy El Dorado International Airport. Photo credit: Opain SA.
The climate crisis has urged governments, industries and companies alike to set goals and commit to mitigation strategies, acknowledging the great need to reach zero carbon by 2050. As we all know, the built environment has a huge impact on reaching this objective. I see this impact as an opportunity to contribute to reaching our decarbonization goals.
Building consensus, defining goals
In 2020 in Colombia, we started a great journey to bring together the government, the private sector, the finance sector and academia to discuss how we could reach net zero by 2050 in alignment with the commitments the country had already made. The initiative was led by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Colombia Green Building Council (CCCS), and it had the participation of more than 160 organizations and over 380 experts.
The first step was to build a shared definition of net zero building for Colombia. This definition certainly needed to include emissions as a central pillar, but it was important for all stakeholders to include other aspects that we have always considered as needing to go hand in hand with emissions. In addition, specifically for the government, the whole life cycle approach was a must, even though most of the global conversation was around operational carbon at that time. As a result of these discussions, in Colombia a net zero building was defined as “a building highly efficient and resilient to climate change, which in its life cycle and the interaction with its surroundings generates well-being for its occupants and a net balance of carbon emissions equal to zero.”
https://www.usgbc.org/articles/decarbonization-colombia-and-role-rating-systems
