World Energy Efficiency Day

March 5th marks World Energy Efficiency Day, a global initiative dedicated to promoting responsible energy consumption. Founded in 1998 at the International Meeting on Energy Efficiency in Austria, this awareness day aims to reduce unnecessary waste and support production processes utilizing renewable sources whenever possible. Furthermore, it encourages communities around the world to lead by example with sustainable habits while also practicing meaningful recycling of resources. In the Built Environment, resources such as building materials require huge amounts of energy and water to produce so by reducing consumption and increasing efficiency with materials and waste through a circular economy, the pressure due to consumption of resources on the planet is significantly reduced.

A Circular Economy Model

In the Built Environment, reducing the consumption of materials means placing value on demolition waste so that the materials are kept in their best condition and continue to be used in the Built Environment for as long as they are valuable. This is done by leveraging circularity as a viable financial model.

To help address this challenge, the World Green Building Council launched the Circularity Accelerator Program in 2022, intended to speed up the transition to a circular economy. ARKANCE is a partner in this program which is in its third year. Out of this program, the Circular Buildings Coalition (CBC) was formed and presents the Blueprints for Tomorrow: Shaping Europe’s Built Environment with Circular Construction. The CBC received 57 project submissions in response to the call last November in Barcelona for Blueprint Projects and each selected project is also a white paper.

One such project comes from Circotrade, a French company that captures a building’s unrealized value by listing, gauging, and trading a building’s components and their embodied carbon to create a reliable inventory for future reuse. This is a new tradable asset class and a model that helps to boost the uptake of secondary construction materials and brings the power of finance to the circular economy.

‘’Our innovative futures trading contract and marketplace mitigates risks and unlocks value with known costs, timelines, and revenues, so we can revolutionize your approach to material reuse where profitability goes hand in hand with resource efficiency’’. Tina Paillet, co-founder of Circotrade.

The Irish Green Building Council presents another Blueprint model from CMEx with an online digital platform that labels construction materials to be reused at their highest value. CMEx is facilitating collaborations, conversations, and change in the construction industry. It is replicable and scalable for use across the construction industry.

Similar innovation is coming out of ReLondon through a partnership between the Mayor of London and London’s transition to improve waste and resource management and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon circular city.  The London Circular Construction Coalition is a testbed and offers two key solutions integrating planning and procurement policies, and digital infrastructure that will match the demand and supply of secondary materials at early stages. These two solutions can be replicated and deployed in other cities worldwide.

For more about the top ten Blueprints for Tomorrow selected by the Circular Building Coalition click here. These projects are turning circular visions into actions and will be presented in Brussels in April 2024.

And there is much more….

MIT Technology Review listed 10 Breakthrough Technologies in 2024 and some of those will help to improve energy efficiency in the Built Environment. We are already seeing the speedy evolution in applications such as ChatGBT, smaller transistors called chiplets for faster computing to the adoption of heat pumps surpassing gas furnaces for the first time in buildings worldwide.

Sustainability for all is marking 2024 World Efficiency Day by raising awareness about reducing energy in the Built Environment by promoting some actions that people can take all year long. When it comes to sustainable construction, LEED and BREEAM are energy efficiency certifications, designed to verify the sustainability and energy efficiency of buildings constructed in the US and UK respectively.

David Clark, Director of Positive Zero is the Grandfather of the Australian Green Star program, a rating tool for energy efficiency that he developed based on the BREEAM model in the UK. He joined the Think.Future podcast recently to tell us about the financial drivers and reasons for needing an energy efficiency rating, so that the asset such as a tenanted building maintains its value. If not, the asset is at risk of becoming stranded and becoming a financial liability.

David offered these wise words at the end of our conversation on the energy efficiency of buildings in precincts.

 

‘’Don't be afraid of the change. I mean, the opportunity is there. It all makes sense. We have all the technologies we already need. When you go, well, I can buy a heat pump tomorrow. I can sign a renewable electricity contract today. Yeah, everything we need is already here and it's only going to get more efficient and cheaper as it gets rolled out at scale. So we just crack on and do it! -David Clark, Director, Positive Zero.

 #World Efficiency Day #Sustainablity #CircularEconomy

Authored by Johanne Gallagher, ARKANCE Strategic Delivery Lead, Sustainability.

About ARKANCE

For over 20 years the brands under ARKANCE company, have been providing software solutions and professional services to Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing industries helping them to understand the role of digitalization for the built environment. Businesses both large and small utilize ARKANCE's dedicated industry experts to help navigate technologies as they emerge, driving efficiency and improving workflows. With a global focus on reducing emissions and increased focus directed towards industry, ARKANCE are now turning their attention to providing the linkages between using technology to digitize, and at the same time leveraging the valuable data insights it brings to build more sustainably. ARKANCE are passionate about helping their customers understand how the technologies they use today can help them to step towards net zero in the future, to build a better world.