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The Importance of a Property Working Group"It is a truism that properties accommodate most human activity. However, the corollary of this is that properties are also the places where a significant proportion of CO2 emissions are generated. The Association for the Conservation of Energy in the UK estimates that, through their construction, use and demolition, built structures are the source for nearly 50% of such emissions. On this basis, any coherent strategy towards constraining and reducing CO2 emissions must place thought and action on the environmental impacts of properties at its core.
Substantial and important work is already underway to identify practical ways and policy measures to ensure that newly constructed buildings are built and operated in environmentally sustainable ways. UNEP’s own Sustainable Building and Construction Initiative is important in this regard. However, depending on economic and property market cycles, newly developed buildings typically replace up to 2-3% of the existing stock per annum. This means that any environmental programme that focuses solely on new construction would leave untouched the current universe of built structures where most environmental and energy inefficiencies reside and, as such, make only slow progress in the crucial theatre of the built environment.
Hence, there is a need for concerted thought and action to be given to finding ways to reduce the environmental impacts of the existing built stock. This is the specific subject area that the UNEP Finance Initiative’s Property Working Group is committed to exploring. The complexities surrounding how properties are owned, leased and occupied are such that this requires specialist attention albeit, clearly, in dealing with the practical management and refurbishment of properties: there is much that the Property Working Group can learn from UNEP’s Sustainable Building and Construction Initiative."
Dr Paul McNamara
Director, Head of Property Research & Information Team, PRUPIM
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