Opinion: Better housing essential for survival on a heating planet

By Dr Peter Graham and Dr Sunita Purushottam | September 17, 2024

22 July 2024 was the world’s hottest day on record, and poorly designed buildings are putting people at risk.

When Saanvi Pavan*, who lives in Gurgaon, New Delhi, gets home from work each day, her home is too hot to be inside. She told us she pours water on her floor to cool the house down, and then sits outside with her family until late evening, but in July, when it was cool enough to go inside, she found a snake in the corner. They couldn’t get it out until 3 am. She’s been worried the heat will make her family sick and now she is worried about snake dangers too.

We’ve heard similar reports from our colleague in Tunisia who suffered through 47°C temperatures this summer with no air conditioning due to heat-related power outages. She told us she’s fearful for the health of her children and aging father.

As global heating accelerates, people in already warm climates will become increasingly vulnerable and their homes are not built to protect them.

In 2022, our research in the Indonesian city of Samarinda found that most household energy use was for cooling. Yet, poor design meant average indoor temperature and humidity were still about the same as outdoor conditions—above 27°C (80°F) with 70% humidity—even when thermostats were set to 20°C. Lack of shading and natural ventilation coupled with poor insulation was causing buildings to heat up quickly while letting all the cool air out.

The buildings and construction sector is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for about 37% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. Demand for cooling is the fastest growing energy use in buildings, with ten air conditioners expected to be sold every second over the next 30 years. Emissions from air conditioning and refrigeration are expected to rise 90% from 2017 levels by 2050.

With urbanization in emerging economies, building emissions could rapidly increase if we don’t build smart from the start. In the past 5 years more than 80% of buildings growth and related energy demand has occurred in emerging economies that have limited or no energy performance requirements for buildings. In 2022, more than 2.4 billion square meters of new buildings, mostly new housing, were constructed (equivalent to the entire building stock of Spain), without any energy, thermal, or resilience performance requirements.

This creates a vicious cycle: poorly designed buildings emit more heat-trapping gases, fueling the climate extremes that further threaten people living in poor housing. Inequitable access to healthy, safe, and comfortable homes violates basic human rights and undermines a just transition to a climate resilient world. We need urgent intervention.

Simple, cost-effective design elements such as proper insulation, shading, and ventilation can ensure safe indoor temperatures.  A handful of core strategies can ensure all people have access to spaces for living and working that are designed to protect health and the climate.

To start, governments must commit to achieving zero-emission, climate-proof buildings as soon as possible.  In March, at the first Buildings and Climate Global Summit, 70 countries pledged to ensure “Near-zero emission and resilient buildings are the new normal by 2030.” But coordinated implementation must follow commitment. Since buildings policy falls under the domain of many regulatory bodies, such as those dedicated to urban development, housing, energy, industry, and health, collaboration between key ministries is vital to align policies, prioritize reforms, and mobilize resources effectively.

Building codes that set design and construction standards can protect people from future climate conditions, but these codes are in desperate need of revision. Although 81 countries have building codes for residential buildings and 77 countries for non-residential, 30% of these codes have not been updated since 2015 and are not designed for rapidly changing climate conditions.

Regions with hot climates are particularly poorly covered. For example, Africa is the most climate-vulnerable continent, yet it is far from prepared. With a population set to double by 2050, more than 70% of its needed building stock is yet to be built. However, only five of the 54 African countries have updated their building regulations in the last decade, and most of these codes were not adequate to begin with.

The good news is that the necessary policy reform can be advanced quickly through effective local stakeholder engagement. While there are global climate-smart building best practices to draw on, buildings policy must be tailored to local contexts and climates. Collaborating with local decision-makers, residents, builders, and experts is essential to understand the needs of the local community, potential challenges, and available resources.

Government ambition is the ignition, but private sector participation is the accelerator. In India, we used Design Charrettes—a focused collaboration among architects, developers, communities to solve design challenges—to design cost-effective and implementable climate-responsive affordable housing projects that will protect occupants’ physical and mental health.

This private sector collaboration then led to the creation of guidelines for affordable housing, which are now being discussed by the Bureau of Indian Standards—one of the committees responsible for revising the National Building Code and Indian Standards for Low-Income Housing in Urban Areas. The Modi government has committed to building 30 million new affordable housing units by 2030, so ensuring these are designed and constructed to be resilient to future climates will improve the lives of millions of people for decades.

Inter-governmental collaboration also plays a key role in supporting national implementation efforts. The Buildings Breakthrough sees 29 countries working together to advance standards, increase demand, unlock finance, coordinate research and building capacity.

The world’s buildings, particularly in the most climate-vulnerable regions of the world, are woefully inadequate to protect the people that live and work in them, while continuing to be one of the largest sources of planet-heating pollution. We will not meet the Paris Agreement goals unless governments set ambitious buildings targets, swiftly followed by policy reforms. Low-carbon, healthy buildings will protect human life in a changing climate and halt the emissions that could cause unlivable temperatures.

*Name changed to protect privacy