In October 2016, countries representing more than 55% of global carbon emissions had ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change for the treaty to enter force. The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. The language of the agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015. As of December 2016, 194 UNFCCC members have signed the treaty, 133 of which have ratified it. After several European Union states ratified the agreement in October 2016, there were enough countries that had ratified the agreement that produce enough of the world’s greenhouse gases for the agreement to enter into force. The agreement went into effect on 4 November 2016.
The treaty aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. With this intention, every countries is striving for reducing carbon emissions in a way looking at the energy use in building is not effective. We started look at how we lower the energy consumption through district scale integration and getting more interested in Net Zero Building and even Net Zero District.
In this technical seminar, the speaker will introduce how cities and towns in US can lower the energy consumption through district scale integration which correlates to the Site Aspects of BEAM Plus Scheme and also give us ideas of Net Zero Building vs. Net Zero District, cases will be introduced to show how energy use aspect is applied which to achieve Net Zero.