In mid-April, Architecture 2030, a non-profit organization that aims to make the building sector part of the solution for global warming, released a “Zero Code”—guidelines support the creation of zero net carbon buildings by combining efficiency standards with protocols for renewable energy. The aim is to reverse the upward trend in the built environment’s greenhouse gas emissions, which have been rising by nearly 1 percent per year since 2010. “We’ve got to begin to bend that curve downward,” says Ed Mazria, Architecture 2030’s founder and CEO.
A zero net energy building is one in which the total amount of energy used, on an annual basis, is equal to the amount of energy created on-site from renewable sources. But a building can qualify as zero net carbon—the focus of the Zero Code—by satisfying its annual energy demand from renewable sources that are located either on- or off-site.
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