Designing the Global Building Network: A Case for People-Centered Energy Education

Building operations require about a third of global energy demand and about a quarter of global carbon emissions, not counting the embedded carbon emissions associated with building materials. Cost-effective solutions are available today to reduce those emissions by 75% or more by 2050. But buildings also represent a massive long-term investment, both for individual families and for society at large, and the current pace of renovation needs massive acceleration if those goals are to be met. Accelerating building energy solutions will require changes in policy and regulation, new financial models, and a vast retraining effort for hundreds of millions of construction workers and building professionals as well as billions of building residents all across the globe. This chapter focuses on that education effort, which must be local as well as global, place-based and people-centered, and leverage international agreements as well as use-inspired research. We provide case studies and a roadmap to illustrate the range and scope of the educational efforts required to address the complexity and critical nature of this challenge.