Posts tagged with 'buildings'
Much of Europe sweltered in August 2025 as a heat dome spread across the continent, pushing peak afternoon temperatures to over 40 degrees C (104 degrees F) in France and Spain. Meanwhile, parts of Greece, Turkey and Albania battled historic and devastating ...
In a city, a grassy park might be a place to stretch out with a book, an asphalt road your route to work, a building wall a canvas for a mural. But beyond their familiar roles, each of these surfaces ...
The way scientists and policymakers measure heat as they seek to combat rising temperatures across the world’s cities requires more nuance than just looking at the daily outdoor temperature. There are a variety of tools that can help show a ...
The way we make and use energy is changing. With prices falling and technology more widely available, clean energy uptake is growing rapidly. Investment in new clean power now outpaces investment in fossil fuels. This represents tremendous progress — but affordable technology ...
Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent, which is severely impacting cities and leading to tens of thousands of deaths, rising hospitalizations, school closures and people adjusting their lives to avoid inhospitable outdoor conditions. The oppressive heat is being felt across the ...
In Mathare – a collection of informal settlements northeast of Nairobi, Kenya, housing more than 500,000 residents – heat is reshaping daily existence. Most buildings in Mathare are constructed from materials like corrugated metal, which trap and magnify heat, forcing ...
Cities are not just places where people live—they are interconnected networks of people, services and economic activity. A city is a system of systems, bringing together transportation, energy, buildings, water, waste management and more. Transforming these interconnected systems is vital ...
The built environment is not on track globally to achieve its sectoral climate targets. Accounting for over a third of total energy system emissions already, the continued use of carbon-intensive materials paired with inefficient energy use throughout the built environment ...
In Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five boroughs, a new schoolyard features newly-planted native trees offering shade and bright playground equipment that sits adjacent to a track and turf field. Colorful murals celebrating the diversity of its Boreum Hill ...
In the stylish Grünerløkka neighborhood in Oslo, construction workers are busy rehabilitating Sophies Minde, an old medical clinic, into a new nursery school and maternal health center. Tidy piles of building materials along the perimeter of the construction site wait ...
In March 2024, the inaugural Buildings and Climate Global Forum convened more than 1,000 participants to spur action towards built environment decarbonization and resilience. The first-of-its-kind forum was welcome, as the sector needs a shakeup. The big issue on the table was ...
In the crowded slums of Zambia, Africa, members of the Zambia Youth Federation, a social movement of the urban poor, conducted climate change research and presented it in an emotional spoken word poem. Their message let policymakers know how climate ...
2023 was hot but ultimately hopeful. The past year saw record-breaking temperatures and an onslaught of extreme weather events like droughts, floods and heatwaves. Cities often bore the brunt of these conditions, exacerbated by the urban heat island effect: when ...
India aims to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 45% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. The country can’t achieve either goal without a radical transformation in its buildings and construction sector, which was responsible for around 17% of the nation’s ...
The past year registered record-shattering global temperatures. People around the world are already witnessing epic heat waves, wildfires and drought at 1.1 degrees C (2 degrees F) of global warming, compared to pre-industrial averages. With current policies putting the world on ...
