2030 Climate Challenge–Scale Zero: Accelerating Healthy Zero-emission, Affordable Housing for All
Buildings account for 40% of U.S. energy-related emissions and emit harmful levels of indoor pollution leading to premature deaths and
unhealthy living conditions. At the same time, most of today’s buildings
will still exist in 2050, so we need to tackle decarbonizing existing buildings if we are
to ensure a healthy, climate-aligned future. We propose Scale Zero,
an initiative that will expand access to healthy indoor environments and slash building emissions
through an integrated policy and implementation model. We envision a zero-emissions future with revitalized
neighborhoods, starting with affordable housing. Our alliance of building decarbonization experts
has combined forces with industry solution providers to produce and deliver predefined
retrofit packages for the most common building types in the US. Right now, retrofits are expensive, complex,
and slow. But we’re organizing the market so that
new, innovative, retrofit technologies can be produced and deployed at scale.
At the same time, our analytics-based policy
campaigns will drive market demand by engaging diverse stakeholders in the public, private
and nonprofit sectors. Overall, our success will be measured by
the policies adopted, the markets mobilized, the emissions cut, and ultimately the health
and environmental improvements realized for residents and the planet.
