Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization

This guide from the World Resources Institute provides city officials with a framework for building decarbonization, emphasizing the distinction between Net Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEBs) and Zero-Carbon Buildings (ZCBs) and the importance of life-cycle assessments (LCAs) to address both operational and embodied emissions.

• City officials face challenges in estimating building emissions due to a lack of international consensus on the definitions of Net Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEBs) and Zero-Carbon Buildings (ZCBs), which are defined differently across government agencies and geographies and are periodically updated by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
• Net Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEBs) focus on balancing energy production and consumption, which only addresses operational energy and ignores embodied emissions released during various lifecycle stages. In contrast, a carbon-based life-cycle assessment (LCA) quantifies both operational and embodied emissions, meaning a NZEB may not actually achieve zero carbon emissions over its entire lifetime.
• To effectively reduce emissions, the document recommends using LCAs that measure greenhouse gas emissions in carbon dioxide equivalents across all building phases: material extraction, construction, and demolition. A common methodology divides these emissions into four stages: product manufacturing (A 1-3), construction (A 4-5), operation (B 1-7), and end-of-life (C 1-4).
• Several tools are available to assist in building LCAs, including openLCA (free), One Click LCA (which meets EN, ISO, LEED, and BREEAM standards), and Tally (used by architects and engineers via Revit® BIM software), often in conjunction with the EC3/Embodied Carbon Calculator for comparing materials during the design stage.
• The document identifies various resources to aid city planning for decarbonization, including the Global Roadmap for Buildings and Construction 2020-2050, the Carbon Leadership Forum Policy Toolkit, and the Handbook of Sustainable Building Policies, which details 25 policy instruments categorized as regulatory-normative, regulatory-informative, economic and market-based, fiscal, and support/voluntary action.

APA

Gangwar, P. (2023). Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/update/developing-city-action-plans-building-decarbonization

Chicago

Gangwar, Pooja. Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization. World Resources Institute, 2023. https://www.wri.org/update/developing-city-action-plans-building-decarbonization.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Gangwar |first1=Pooja |title=Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=14 September 2023 |url=https://www.wri.org/update/developing-city-action-plans-building-decarbonization |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{gangwar2023developing, author = {Gangwar, Pooja}, title = {{Developing City Action Plans for Building Decarbonization}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2023}, month = sep, url = {https://www.wri.org/update/developing-city-action-plans-building-decarbonization}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }