How to Paris-Proof Buildings: Take-aways from CirclNL

At CirclNL “Paris-proof gebouwen: hoe dan?” in which Anke participated as a speaker, various perspectives on the Dutch climate agreement and how to reach the goals were presented:

• the big picture of encouraging citizens and companies at national level
• the role of banks – for both businesses and individual home owners
• how individual home-owners can “green” their home
• how companies – like The Student Hotel – take up this challenge

Innovation Lighthouse highlighted the importance of collaboration in the real estate sector to identify, test, measure and implement innovations that help the built environment significantly reduce their impact.

 

Key take-ways:

• Realizing a “Paris-proof” real estate sector is certainly a challenge, but it is feasible. There work to be done, but innovation is advancing and individuals and businesses are starting to implement them
• There is a need for success stories of frontrunners to convince others to follow – both for businesses and individuals. Diederik Samsom highlighted the “neighbor effect”: people are more likely to take action if they see their neighbor has successfully made a sustainable change (such as installing solar panels)
• Implementing climate agreements can only be achieved if this is supported by financial instruments to finance investments needed to become carbon neutral and to bridge the gap between long term savings and short-term costs. These instruments are reaching the market at this stage
• Banks have a role to play in providing loans to home-owners wanting to green their home, and in stimulating their business customers to make the investments needed to become more sustainable
• The need for inspiring examples is also clearly present in the business community. The Student Hotel presented their approach to having a positive impact and highlighted the importance to focus on the use of buildings as well as impacts at the construction stage
• Innovation Lighthouse concluded by emphasizing the added value of collaboration within the real estate sector to test, measure and implement innovations and expand positive impacts from just one company to the entire sector and beyond

The list of speakers can be found here: https://circl.nl/programma/paris-proof-gebouwen-hoe-dan