On the meeting’s main topic of designing and formulating whole life carbon policies, Helle provided an overview of the Nordic countries’ and Estonia’s progress in integrating whole life carbon declarations and setting limit values in regulation.
Although the importance of decarbonising buildings has received more and more attention, only a few countries have implemented policies requiring whole life carbon calculations and reductions. In the light of this, OECD has arranged a series of roundtable discussions addressing this very topic and sharing latest development, challenges and progress on from leading countries’ and cities’ development of effective strategies for decarbonising buildings.
A shift in policies - prioritising existing buildings
The OECD meeting also marks the launch of the report “Global Monitoring of Policies for Decarbonising Buildings: A Multi-level Approach” based on the OECD Global Survey on Buildings and Climate. One of the key findings in the report based on 28 countries across continents was the clear shift in policies when it comes to new versus existing buildings. 76% of the responding countries have indicated a shift in focus and that they will prioritise existing buildings over new ones in the future. That is a significant increase from the current 39%.
Shifts in focus are also evident in areas such as energy consumption and material usage. Broadly speaking, there is a noticeable transition in policies, with a growing emphasis on CO2 reduction related to material usage. For example, current policies prioritise "Heating: Energy efficiency" at 64%, but this is expected to decrease to 25% in the future. In contrast, the focus on the climate impact from material seems to be rising on the political agenda. For instance, "Circularity of building materials" is expected to receive significantly more attention, increasing from the current 14% to 64% in future policies.