Today, buildings account for one-third of global energy consumption and emissions and likely to increase substantially with growing urbanization. New construction will account for the majority of building energy use across the region in the next decade; but at the same time, the opportunity for investment in green building retrofits is billions of dollars per year across the region. What are the policies needed to ensure that existing buildings are upgraded and modernized to reduce the need for energy for electricity, heating and/or cooling? What can governments do to incentivize investment in new green and affordable buildings by the private sector? How can local governments play a leading role to ensure compliance with building codes? How can the private sector support the government to reduce energy consumed by buildings including embodied carbon in cement?

Presentations in this session will cover a review of ADB projects on energy efficiency and green buildings across Asia and the Pacific; insights from South Korea’s national policies for enhancing building energy efficiency; the results of a three-country survey in Central Asia that examined the awareness among households of the importance and effectiveness of insulation for comfort and energy efficiency; innovative community-based approaches that the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been taking to deploy energy-efficient solutions tailored to local climates and cultures; a successful approach for leveraging public sector buildings for energy-efficiency market transformation in India; and the results from a competitive Innovation Challenge Fund in Vietnam, which enabled innovators to demonstrate novel energy efficiency solutions as technologies with sound business cases.