A Primer on Paris
A fifth of the world’s largest companies have committed To A 2050 Net Zero GHG Emissions Target
With COP 26 being held in the United Kingdom over the next 11 days, the world looks at its progress towards the climate goals in the Paris Climate Accord. It’s not just nations; an increasing number of organizations are also making public commitments to align with the Paris Climate Accords. But what does that really mean?
You may have even been asked what it would take to align your organization with the Paris Agreement. It might also be asked a different way, can we be Carbon Neutral by 2050? Can we hit a particular reduction goal by 2030? Perhaps it was even more subtle, in the form of “we have an asset in a particular city that has a performance ordinance that requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.” However, the question was asked, directly or indirectly, all roads lead to Paris.
So what is the Paris Agreement anyway?
In 2015, the United Nations held a Convention on Climate Change (COP) in - you guessed it - Paris, France. During this conference, world leaders representing 195 nations agreed to a strategy to combat climate change. But those leaders agreeing to do something didn’t mean “ta-da” problem solved, go fight climate change. Each of those leaders had to return to their own countries and obtain formal approval. The Paris Agreement could not go into effect until at least 55 countries representing 55% of global emissions had formally joined. Nearly one year later, on November 4, 2016, this occurred. Today, almost every nation on the planet has formally joined, only two major emitting countries have not - Iran and Iraq, and Iraq is working towards approval.
So what does it mean to join the Paris Agreement formally? Each country has to communicate its commitment and its plan on how they intend to reduce their emissions to meet the goals of the agreement. This means each country may have a different strategy, depending on their unique carbon impacts and how best to reduce the carbon emissions specific to their country.
What is the goal of the Paris Agreement?
The purpose or goal is to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and provide a strategy to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees potentially.
Why 2 degrees?
According to NASA, “if warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, more than 70 percent of Earth’s coastlines will see sea-level rise greater than 0.66 feet (0.2 meters), resulting in increased coastal flooding, beach erosion, salinization of water supplies and other impacts on humans and ecological systems.”
Here is the twist on sea-level rise, 40% of the global population lives within 100 kilometers of a coastline (source). Such an event would cause global population disruption as people flee the flooding coastlines. From a Real Estate perspective, if 40% of the people live near a coastline - want to guess how many of our buildings are also near coastlines? NOAA has an interactive tool called the sea level rise viewer to see the impact of sea-level rise. With this tool, you can input the level of sea rise and observe what the community-level impacts from coastal flooding will be on a map. The link to the tool is here: Sea Level Rise Viewer. I will warn you; it’s kind of scary.
Unfortunately, there is more at stake than just sea-level rise. A warmer earth alters weather patterns and changes how and where precipitation falls. This means heat waves, floods, wildfires, drought, more intense storms, and more frequent and damaging hurricanes. Yet, it still doesn’t stop there. Migration patterns are impacted, and life cycles are altered. This may mean plants flower before the pollinators arrive, and invasive species of plants and insects spread into new areas with less resistance. The entire food cycle is impacted, and that means our own food cycle as well.
As water and food resources are impacted, populations shift, abandoning lost agricultural areas. Shifting populations can result in government destabilization and refugee crisis. Syria provided a glimpse of just what could happen. While it was not the only contributing factor that led to chaos erupting in 2011, droughts began hitting the country starting in the 1980;s and the country experienced a four-year drought from 2006-2010. 85% of the countries livestock died, and 800,000 people lost their livelihoods as farmers. As nearly two-thirds of the food production was lost, almost 1.5 million people fled rural parts of the nation. Those who stayed suffered hardships becoming easy targets for recruitment into radical recruiters for what would later be called ISIS.
That is a long list of potential impacts, and it was not exhaustive. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted that any rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius poses an extreme risk of those impacts. This panel concluded that the only chance we have to avoid these changes to life as we know it is global action. It was with this in mind that leaders at the Paris COP determined that they must coordinate their efforts and establish targets.
The “Kind of” Commitment by the United States
The flip flop of the United States is well known. An original partipant in 2015, The United States began to leverage existing tools and laws to cut its own carbon emissions. In 2016, the US formally joined the agreement with its submission for proposed participation. In 2017, with the new Trump Administration, the US suddenly reversed course announcing it’s withdraw at it’s earliest ability which was November 4, 2020. Despite the 2017 announcement, US envoys continued to participate and while federal level leadership was absent, several states and cities stepped in to fill the void. From energy and water benchmark reporting laws and performance reduction laws to voluntary campaigns the real estate industry in particular continued its commitment to reduce emissions. In 2021, with yet another administration change, President Biden reversed the US withdraw on his first day in office and put forward a new commitment.
Despite the on-again, off-again initial approach to the Paris Agreement Commitments, for the most part, the US remained on track from its original 2016 goal. However, five years into the agreement, it became clear that the initial commitments needed more rigorous milestones. Between continued emissions and goals that were backend loaded, too much had changed. Therefore members set up a more stringent goal of 50% reductions by 2030, along with the original goal of 100% carbon net-neutral by 2050.
In April 2021, the United States submitted a revised Nationally Determined Commitment (NDC) to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030, aligning with the revised Paris milestones while retaining its commitment of 100% carbon-net neutral emissions by 2050.
Getting there will require coordinated effort in many sectors. The NDC outlines several of these efforts, including 100% carbon-free electrical supply and a 50% reduction of carbon emissions from existing buildings by 2035. Reaching these goals will require effort from many sectors, including applying technology and developing more utility-scale renewable energy by electrical generators. Increasing standards will be needed by state commissions governing utilities and more city governments will need to enact performance ordinances and more rigorous building codes. It will require organizations to track their own impact, gather utility consumption data, and measure performance. Critical will be increasing your understanding of where opportunities exist to reduce consumption and where smarter purchasing decisions can be made when arranging for electrical supply.
Behind those organizations are the investors in those organizations. Investors who seek to protect their investments, minimizing risk, and maximizing returns. That means assigning funds to organizations that can demonstrate that they are managing their impact, that are identifying and mitigating their risks, that are taking advantage of innovation to realize opportunties.
What is the scale of those investments? According to Bloomberg Intelligence, ESG assets may hit $53 trillion by 2025, a third of global AUM (source). That commitment is based on the estimated $26 trillion in economic benefits that could be realized through the Paris Climate Agreement (source). Participation is anticipated to create 24 million new jobs, according to the International Labor Organization (source), and potentially avert at least a portion of the nearly 2.3 trillion in economic losses attributed to climate disasters (source).
The Paris Climate Agreement is an essential framework to align with for both governments and organizations. It is no wonder that we are seeing both the private and public sectors making such commitments.
Of course, making the commitment and achieving the commitment are two different things. I will continue to highlight the role of the built environment in achieving this reduction in future articles. There are also several archived past articles that can provide insight into what actions we need to take to reach that goal.
Actions we take, and potentially the leadership that comes from COP26 this week can have a big impact. You can also help reduce the impact of the built environment by sharing this blog with your peers. It will take all of us to impact the 39% of greenhouse gasses attributed to the built environment. It starts with awareness, and we succeed with teamwork.
Stay well!
Chris Laughman is the ThirtyNine Blog author, a blog dedicated to reducing the impact of the built environment. When not blogging, Chris is helping the real estate industry minimize energy and water impact as the Vice President of Sustainability for Conservice, the Utility Experts. Whether Multifamily, Single Family, Student Housing, Commercial, or Military, we simplify utility billing and expense management by doing it for you. Our insight into your utility consumption provides an opportunity to identify risks. Leveraging innovation and experience, we ignite solutions with tangible impacts and track performance to ensure the trendline stays laser-focused on the goal. At Conservice, we have developed a true bill-to-boardroom solution to help truly make a difference. We have before us a tremendous opportunity. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we will get this done. Contact me at claughman@conservice.com for more information.
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