Building to Cool the Planet - Beyond 'Green Building'

Building to Cool the Planet—Beyond 'Green Building'

Wednesday, February 27, 2019
7:00 - 9:00pm (doors open at 6:30 pm)
San Rafael Community Center                                                                618 B Street, San Rafael, CA

Join us for an eye-opening evening about building materials and design, carbon, and the future!  

By 2060, the world is projected to add 2.5 trillion square feet of buildings.* This is the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the planet every 34 days for the next 40 years.
* UN Environment, Global Status Report 2017

The world is experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of people who live in cities with 1.5 million people moving to them every week. Hundreds of new cities have been built in the last twenty years, and construction continues on a massive scale across the world to accommodate a rapidly increasing urban population.

The construction of new buildings has a huge impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions largely due to the use of cement, steel, and other common materials. Once constructed, building operations contribute further to GHG emissions through energy use. How and what we build will have a huge impact on the climate.

With an imperative 20-year time horizon for dramatic action, reducing GHG emissions generated in constructing buildings and other infrastructure is now seen as more vital than minimizing operational emissions over their lifetime. We've been focused on energy efficiency in the built environment for a long time, but what is embodied carbon and why does it matter so much?

New materials, techniques, and designs also enable buildings and other infrastructure to sequester carbon. Can the built environment be a carbon sponge? A part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

The program will explore numerous questions, including:

• What does green building miss? What are embodied emissions in the built environment and what are the biggest sources of these emissions?
  
• How can innovative design, materials and public policy be effective in reducing embodied emissions and even sequester carbon?
• What is net zero and is it more expensive to build 'greener'?

Speakers (bios)
Bruce King Ecological Building Network	Alice Zanmiller Marin County Community Development Agency	David Arkin Arkin-Tilt Architects