Mark Alan Hughes: Why Copenhagen matters

THIS column is about the importance of "what gets built and how" to life in Philadelphia. It's a topic that applies to everywhere humans settle, which makes Philadelphia interesting because our neighborhoods display ways of building carried from every continent.

But buildings also matter to the world as a whole. The energy wasted in the location, construction and operation of buildings is a necessary part of avoiding the costs and potential catastrophe of climate change in the coming decades. Cities that learn how to turn that waste into value will be the competitive locations of the very near future.

Next week, more than 190 nations will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate the next round of an international treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a clunky name that explains why the treaty is referred to by the cities in which each round is negotiated: Kyoto, Japan, Bali, Indonesia, and now Copenhagen.

Besides to the national delegations and, at last count, more than 60 heads of state, about 20,000 scientists, activists and journalists will also descend on Copenhagen to release their research and exchange ideas.

John Byrne of the University of Delaware is one of our region's most prominent climate scientists and public intellectuals. As a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. He is the godfather of Delaware's Sustainable Energy Utility, the model for a new energy authority that is an essential part of a smart energy future for Philadelphia.

His Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP) is a U.N.-designated observer organization for Copenhagen. My Penn colleague Ali Malkawi and I are joining the CEEP delegation on a U.N. panel called "Place-based Decarbonization Strategies: Leadership from Cities."

No one invited me to Bali, home of perhaps the world's most beautiful women. But Copenhagen, in December, near the Arctic Circle? Sure, there's a spot on the panel.

After months of nay-saying, it looks like real progress may happen in Copenhagen. The two most important economies in the world are China (the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the U.S. (almost the highest per capita emitter of GHG, Australia just edges us). Much of China's emissions come from stuff they make for the U.S. market.

In the days before Thanksgiving, both nations announced opening offers for emission reductions to be negotiated at the talks. While both are just politically comfortable opening moves, it's significant that all of the world's largest emitters except India are in the game with specific reduction offers.

The U.S. offered to commit to reducing its 2020 emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels. The next day, China offered to reduce its "carbon intensity" by 45 percent by 2020. That compares with the offer by the European Union in October to reduce its 2020 levels by 20 percent from 1990s.

These reductions matter because these nations produce 60 percent of the world's emissions. The International Energy Agency estimates that China's offer alone would provide a fourth of the reduction needed to limit the planet's projected temperature rise to 3.6 degrees, the most widely accepted threshold on where climate change gets dangerous.

So what, how and where we build matters decisively to all this because that's where the carbon is. According to McKinsey and Co., 60 percent of the investment needed between now and 2030 to stay under the 3.6-degree limit is in buildings and transportation, the two things that, combined with people, create cities.

Buildings are where the fight for energy security, economic advantage and climate change will be won or lost. Copenhagen is a critical round in that fight.

Mark Hughes teaches at PennDesign and the TC Chan Center for Energy Studies.

E- mail mahughes@design.upenn.edu.

He will be blogging live on FLIP video from Copenhagen Dec. 13-18 about issues that most affect Philly: www.planphilly.com.