A Common Language for
CO2 performance of
Buildings
Dr Rajat Gupta
Consultant, UNEP-SBCI
rgupta@brookes.ac.uk
Buildings Under UNFCCC Flexible
Mechanisms
14th March 2011, Bonn, Germany
Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative
United Nations Environment Programme
www.unep.org/sbci
MEMBERSHIP
www.unep.org/sbci
Sustainable Building Index
SC Members: The SC shall be a balanced
multi-stakeholder committee consisting of
eleven UNEP-SBCI Members representing a
balance of industry interests designated
according to the following seats:
Seat (S)
Vice Chair (VC)
SBCI Donor (D)
SBCI Coordinator (C)
Steering Committee (SC)
Sustainable Buildings (SB)
SBCI Board of Directors (Board)
Technical Advisory Committee (TAC)
• Coordinator (0) (occupied by SBCI
staff);
• Sponsor (1) (occupied by SC
Sponsor);
• Research Institution (2);
• Not-for-Profit (2);
• Private Sector (2);
• Product Manufacturer (2);
• Local Government (1); and
• National Government (1).
*The SC shall have balanced representation from
developing and developed countries.
CHAIR
Policy Approaches
Appliance standards,
Taxation
Energy performance contracting
Mandatory auditing
Public benefit charges
Trade
Tax exemtions
CDM
Cap and
Building codes
Negotiated agreements
DSM
Cooperative procurement
Labelling
Information
Utility
Detailed billing
White certificates
`Public leadership programs
Common Carbon Metric
Standardization of building Indicators, Metrics, & Protocol:
Establishing Energy Performance and GHG emissions
Baselines
Energy use in kWh
Use per m2
Use per occupant
Baseline Performance
Target Performance
By Region
Requirements
1. Climate performance data need to
follow consistent definitions and
protocols to be comparable.
2. Definitions and protocols applied
for data collection need to be
universally applicable regardless
of the type and location of the
buildings.
3. Definitions and protocols need to
be applicable at the individual
building level, as well as at
aggregated levels at city, regional
or national level.
4. Definitions and protocols need to
be practical and account for data
gaps and weak data quality.
www.unep.org/sbci
The Common Carbon
Metric (CCM)
Measuring Energy
Use & Reporting GHG
Emissions from
Building Operations
Energy
kWh/m2/yr
Emissions (equivalent (e))
kgCO2e/m2/yr
kgCO2e/occupant/yr
The Metric
 A methodology used to define
buildings climate impact
 Consistent with principles and
standards for environmental
performance assessments (ISO
standards and WRI/WBCSD
Greenhouse Gas protocol)
 Meets the requirements that
reporting is measurable, reportable
and verifiable (MRV)
 Allows for bottom-up, and topdown data compilation
CCM methodology
 Top-down approach:
Performance of the whole
(regional, city or national level) is
characterized at a coarse level
using estimated data on fuel and
electricity consumption.
 Bottom-up approach:
Performance of individual casestudy buildings is characterized at
a fine level using measured data
on fuel and electricity
consumption. Ideally sample size
will be statistically valid, enabling
verification of the whole.
CCM Phase I
• First draft of the CCM was released at COP15 in Copenhagen
in December 2009
• Implementation of CCM was launched on 19 May 2010 in
Paris through a pilot phase (Phase 1) to:
• Road-test the methodology in an Excel-based platform
(Nine participants)
• Coordinated stakeholder review (19 organisations)
• This helped to:
• Uncover practical issues surrounding the implementation
of the CCM
• Develop consensus methodologies for unresolved
aspects of assessing building performance
• Prioritize areas for future research
CCM Phase I Pilot
Nine participants
Organization
Hydro Construction
The Energy and Resources
Institute (TERI)
Skanska AB
Autodesk
Lend Lease Corp.
- UK
- Australia
Building & Construction
Authority
Construction Industry
Development Board (CIDB)
Urenio.org
ITC Limited, India
Type of entry
Bottom up
Bottom up
Region / Location
Bellenberg, Germany and France, Toulouse
India
Top down and bottom up
Top down and bottom up
Solna, Sweden
US, cities unknown
Top down and bottom up
Top down and bottom up
Top down and bottom up
Various cities
Sydney
Singapore
Some data entered; no performance metrics
computed due to incomplete dataset
Some data entered in top-down approach
Bottom up
South Africa, various cities
N/A
ITC Green Centre, Gurgaon, India
Performance metrics computed for a total of:
- 49 individual buildings (total area: 1.48 km2)
- 5 larger stocks (or Wholes) (total area: 176.60 km2)
CCM Phase I Pilot
Performance of a building stock at the city level
Building category
kWh / m2
kg CO2e / m2
kWh / occupant
kg CO2e /
occupant
Average performance baselines for specific building types, measured through the bottom-up approach
Office
Retail
Hotel
Other
222.8
221.5
302.8
156.0
151.9
147.0
142.8
103.6
8,387.9
7,859.0
14,305.3
2,736.1
5,568.1
5,217.0
6,745.3
1,816.3
Performance baselines for the Whole, measured through the top-down approach
Non-residential
Residential
282.4
51.5
182.8
32.8
5,831.7
3,733.7
3,774.6
2,376.5
Red cells indicate that average performance of a set of
buildings of a given building type, as measured through
the bottom-up approach, is worse than the performance of
the whole’s non-residential building stock.
CCM Phase I Pilot
Performance baselines of a single building type
Building name
Building 1
Building 2
Building 3
Building 4
Building 5
Building 6
Building 7
Building 8
Building 9
Building 10
Building 11
Baseline for portfolio
kWh / m2
128.1
358.0
438.1
221.9
799.5
403.4
124.9
288.9
393.0
188.7
211.8
323.3
kg CO2e / m2
71.6
137.1
244.8
87.1
442.3
188.5
69.8
126.6
187.8
105.4
118.3
161.7
kWh / occupant
3258.8
8831.6
5457.9
5541.8
13551.2
15446.6
3179.4
13109.1
7114.9
3081.0
5811.3
7671.2
kg CO2e /
occupant
1820.5
3382.7
3049.1
2174.4
7496.2
7216.2
1776.2
5745.8
3400.2
1721.2
3246.5
3729.9
CCM Phase I Pilot
Performance baselines for multiple building types
Building
kWh / m2
kg CO2e / m2
Retail buildings
Building Black
409.3
Building Blue
82.7
Building Orange
274.7
Building Green
264.2
Building Yellow
418.3
Baseline for retail buildings
262.9
Other non-residential buildings
Building Pink
178.8
Building Purple
195.0
Building Brown
587.6
Building Hazel
151.2
Baseline for portfolio
300.0
191.8
30.7
124.2
112.8
198.2
119.3
69.4
39.4
131.5
74.5
79.5
CCM Phase I Pilot
Key outcomes
Developing consensus-based definitions
What definition for
building area has been
adopted by SBCI for
subsequent phases of the
CCM?
Answer: Building area is measured in meters squared (m2) of Gross
Floor Area (GFA) of a building.
The GFA is to be measured from the inside face of exterior
perimeter wall, also including areas of sloping surfaces such as
staircases, galleries, raked auditoria, and tiered terraces, but
excluding open floors and exterior covered ways and balconies.
CCM Phase I Pilot
Key outcomes
Categories of building types
How are building types UNEP-SBCI has decided to adopt the UNFCCC list of
defined in the CCM? Is building types for Phase II.
this consistent
internationally?
RESIDENTIAL:
Single-family residential, Multi-family residential
Other residential
NON-RESIDENTIAL:
Office, Hotel, Warehouse & storage, Mercantile & service,
Food service, Entertainment, Other commercial, Education,
Public assembly, Health care, Public order and safety,
Institutional lodging, Other institutional, Mixed-use
building units, Other non-residential
CCM Phase I Pilot
Key outcomes
Occupancy
How should I estimate
the occupancy of a
building?
Answer: At this stage, UNEP-SBCI does not provide a single
definition for estimating occupancy.
The review process has identified several rules-of-thumb that may
be used to determine occupancy, including the numbers of persons
sleeping within the defined area (for residential buildings) and the
full-time equivalent (FTE) concept (for non-residential buildings).
CCM Phase I Pilot
Key outcomes
Normalizing energy performance using climate data






kWh / m2 / year
kgCO2e / m2/ year
kWh / occupant / year
kg CO2e / occupant / year
kWh / m2 / year / DD
kWh / occupant/ year / DD
Next steps: CCM Phase II
Preview of changes: technical additions
 Expanded list of residential and non-residential building types
based on UNFCCC’s building categorizations.
 Normalize building performance by degree day information.
 Use custom emission factors in addition to the default IPCC
and IEA emission factors as defaults.
 Input electricity consumption data by month through the topdown and bottom-up approaches.
 Input information on multiple fuels for the same building.
 Record the year of last building retrofit.
 Record amount of purchased green power or amount of
renewable energy generated on-site and returned to the grid.
Next steps: CCM Phase II
Preview of changes: improvement in functionality
Implementation of CCM through an Open-access web-based
tool with the ability to:
 Track the performance of the same building sets over time.
 Create inventories for building sets stretching across different
cities/regions, including inventories at the national level.
 Compare regions of similar climates but different emission
factors.
 Reports could still be created in standardised format such as
Excel.
Next steps: CCM Phase II
Preview of changes: Phase II Pilot testing
 Pilot with 20-40 cities or organisations with large portfolio of
buildings
 Encompass locations in different climate zones and in both
developing and developed countries
 Timeline of activities:
 Refine scope and identify participants (Feb - May 2011)
 Technical additions and Pilot (May - Oct 2011)
 Report-writing. CCM 2012 version for measurement and
reporting related to national and international carbon
credit initiatives (Oct 2011- May 2012)
Common metrics
CO2e
1. Benchmarking
2. Baselines
3. Monetization
Source: World Green Building Council
Common metrics
Stakeholders Galvanize Around Tools
Benchmarking: labeling & ratings
Stakeholders = Designers, Owners, Tenants
Baselines: targets & regulation
Stakeholders= Policy Makers, Shareholders
Monetization: rebates & incentives
Stakeholders= Investors, Financiers, Real-estate
Professionals
Source: World Green Building Council
Next Steps
 The Common Carbon Metric offers a common and
widely agreed corner stone for international policy
making on climate mitigation in the building sector.
 WGBC, SBA & UNEP working through harmonisation
issues.
 Phase II Pilot is being planned.
Many
thanks for
your
attention!
www.unep.org/sbci