The World Green Building Council is co-developing an ‘NDC Scorecard for Sustainable Buildings’ to support the evaluation and strengthening of national-level policy on the built environment.
The tool is currently being developed with five pilot Green Building Councils (GBCs) – Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Nigeria and the Philippines – alongside local stakeholders including governments, to ensure nations are being bold on buildings in their NDC submissions and national policies.
Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, are national climate action plans by each country under the Paris Agreement. A country’s NDC outlines their strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to enable the collective global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5ºC and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The Paris Agreement requires that NDCs are updated with increasingly higher ambition, taking into consideration each country’s capacity.
The next round of updated NDCs are due in early 2025. It is absolutely critical that the next batch of NDCs accelerates the transition and closes the gap to 1.5ºC. This can be achieved by not overlooking the role of buildings.
The Scorecard tool will allow all policymakers, GBCs and others to assess and compare their countries’ NDCs, and reveal where further action is necessary to increase the ambition and effectiveness of their NDCs and national policies so they are putting the sector on a trajectory for 1.5ºC.
The tool will also enable stakeholders to conduct a gap analysis to ensure that NDCs, national policies and implementation are all aligned so that commitments are being put into practice.
The tool will enable the evaluation of NDCs using a number of criteria, such as carbon, resilience and adaptation, circularity, water, biodiversity, health, equity and access, and finance mechanisms, and establishes if the NDC is supported by national policies and building codes to ensure implementation.
We are working with five pilot GBCs in different global regions – Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Nigeria and the Philippines – to develop the Scorecard and produce tailored action plans for each of the five countries.
Its development process is designed to identify best-practice building policies that should be in revised NDCs and integrated into national buildings regulatory frameworks.
The tool is being developed using a collaborative process that engages local stakeholders and political actors from the outset to bolster locally relevant action that delivers on global priorities. This will ensure that the communities who are responsible for implementation are involved in the process and maximise the chance for better and deliverable outcomes.
Early in 2025, we will release a digitised Scorecard tool, and the wider GBC network will then work with their governments to bridge the identified gaps and strengthen the NDCs and national policies.
We intend this engagement to be a stepping stone towards working with governments to develop full national decarbonisation roadmaps for the built environment, with GBCs as facilitators.
The NDC Scorecard for Sustainable Buildings is being developed with funding from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).
If you’re interested in staying up to date with the development of the NDC Scorecard for Sustainable Buildings, sign up to our Global Update for regular updates on our work.
Or get in touch with your local Green Building Council if you’d like to get involved.
