The author of today’s post, Andy Darrell, is Regional Director for the Living Cities program at Environmental Defense.
In 1800, 3 percent of the world’s people lived in urban areas. In the last year, that number is likely to have passed 50 percent [PDF]. The world is becoming urbanized at an extremely fast rate, and as the urban population increases, so does urban development.
This presents an opportunity in the fight against global warming, since energy use in buildings accounts for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
You might think it costs a lot more to make a building energy efficient, but it doesn’t have to. A building that produces half the usual emissions can cost as little as 1 percent more to build. How can that be?