Rapid growth of urban construction threatens global climate targets. Cities have a lot of influence over what gets built and the associated greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts. However, cities across the globe have largely overlooked the challenge of reducing construction-related greenhouse gas emissions, which generally happen upstream and outside local administrative boundaries (e.g. emissions from production of construction materials). Construction stakeholders lack information on how much GHG emissions construction is causing, limits to how much GHG construction can emit in the future, and by extension the reductions required to get from one to the other.
To provide guidance on past/current GHG emissions and future reduction needs, we calculate construction emissions and carbon budgets for over 1,000 cities across the world. We estimate construction emissions using an economic model called an environmentally-extended inputoutput model (EEIO) along with statistical regression techniques. We set carbon budgets by dividing up the world’s global carbon budget – which is the overall pie of allowable future emissions – and allocating a share to the cities based on their population or emissions. These budgets set a cumulative limit on how much each city can emit from their construction activities in the future. We then divide the overall emissions budget evenly among expected future buildings to outline the emissions per unit/building that align with climate limits. We also built a public, interactive dashboard that can be used to visualize the construction footprint and carbon budgets of one or multiple cities. The dashboard can be viewed HERE.
Download the two-page summary below!