Decarbonizing buildings to meet climate goals and states as a test bed: California Case Studies

• Emerging Technology: Accelerate the identification, testing, and demonstration of emerging and underutilized decarbonization technologies

• CalNEXT Program

• Scalable deployment: Assess and develop program solutions to address barriers to widespread adoption of technologies to supercharge the transition

• Midstream Programs and TECH Clean California

• Increasing baseline: Lock-in the transformation with development of policy using new technology as the baseline

• Appliance Standards

Session Brief: In light of India’s burgeoning cooling requirements and its commitments under the Paris agreement, this session aims to discuss the most suitable and sustainable strategy that can be adopted to decarbonize Indian cities while meeting the demand for cooling

The session will be structured in an ‘Oxford Union Style Debate’ format to engage the speakers as well as the audience. The proposition team will be speaking in favour of district cooling as well as other cooling technologies as the best possible solution; and how its deployment on a large scale (real estate, smart cities and urban planning) facilitated through the right policies and investments can yield economic and ecological dividends for all stakeholders through significantly reduced power load on the grid (as well as the potential for load shifting through the integration of renewable and thermal energy storage), energy consumption savings, etc. On the other hand, those representing the “opposition” will focus on challenges to the deployment and adoption of DC, relevance and feasibility of DC for India, especially in the context of affordable housing, resi-sector, and Tier II, III, IV cities, as well as the larger role passive cooling measures and nature-based solutions can play in providing thermal comfort.

The event will be moderated by Tabreed India, an industry leader in district cooling, and will feature dignitaries from the cooling and allied industries as well as government organisations. The session, through its structure and focused conversation, will help provide a holistic and systemic view, integrating seemingly isolated aspects of the argument cohesively together, for formulating and implementing India’s Cooling Roadmap.

Session Brief: In India, road transport contributes 90% of the total transportation-induced carbon emissions. India has committed to reducing the emissions intensity of its gross domestic product (GDP) to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. E-mobility is among the key strategy being adopted to achieve this goal. The important categories of vehicles for e-mobility include the two-wheelers and three-wheelers (accounting for 80% of the total sales of vehicles), public transport (inter-city and intra-city) and private vehicles. EVs higher upfront cost, range anxiety and potential safety issues and are some of the significant challenges in accelerating EV adoption in India. Battery swapping is among the options being considered as a potential solution that could accelerate EV adoption. This session will discuss the challenges and barriers to EV transformation, battery swapping and the potential for retrofitting of the existing fleet. It will also shed some light on the government’s and industry's efforts in terms of policies and demand aggregation to accelerate the market transformation.

Launch of the whitepaper titled "Customer Engagement – A tool for Utility driven for Utility Demand Side Management."

Session Brief: The increasing share of renewables in India’s grid power and proliferation of decentralized power generation has created the need for demand flexibility, amongst other solutions for cost-effective renewable grid integration. While demand-side management is not a new concept for India, demand flexibility to support renewable integration and decarbonization is relatively new and is limited to small-scale pilots in a few states. Distribution utilities must also purchase expensive electricity to meet critical peak demand. The Central Electricity Authority projects the country’s peak demand to grow from 203 GW to 366 GW between 2021-22 and 2031-32. The reforms in the wholesale power market, bringing ancillary services into the market, increasing proliferation of smart meters, and smart grid technologies make demand flexibility feasible in important demand sectors such as buildings that have a share of more than 30% in India’s electricity consumption. Buildings with new energy technologies have the potential to interact with the grid rather than only passively drawing power from the grid. Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) have a holistically optimised blend of energy efficiency, energy storage, renewable energy, and load flexibility technologies enabled through smart controls and building occupants’ behaviour.

The session will discuss the strategies and way forward for the Indian grid to scale-up demand flexibility measures and create an ecosystem for demand flexibility. The session will discuss the technology and infrastructure needed for demand flexibility which also has the potential to enhance grid resilience, regulatory reforms and business models to establish and accelerate the market for demand flexibility in India.

Session Brief: As of December 2022, 4,237 companies globally and 107 Indian companies have signed up for Science-Based Targets, which helps corporations set and meet emissions reduction targets from their operations to align with the 1.5°C, well below 2°C, or net-zero goals. These include companies which have committed to developing targets or have already set targets. Through this session, medium and large-scale enterprises and organisations can share the realised benefits of the adoption of data-driven techniques for energy management. They can further elaborate on how external and internal challenges have affected the uptake of measures for end-use energy management and how these were overcome. Organisations can highlight how their evolving energy strategy ties in with ESG compliance and broader climate goals while delivering financial savings. They can share such transferrable learnings among each other as well as with the audience to propel smoother adoption of energy management practices across sectors.

Session Brief: The construction sector is highly fragmented with different stages, processes and different stakeholders, and each stakeholder has an impact on the GHG emissions in the entire building life cycle. Therefore, to effectively de-risk the sector from climate risks while continuing to innovate and provide a sustainable habitat, greater participation and coordinated action is required from all the key players in the entire value chain. Population and economic growth have fostered urbanisation in India, and the number of urban towns and cities is increasing drastically. This increasing urbanisation is leading to a rampant rise in the construction of buildings and housing projects. According to AEEE’s estimates, India's total building floor area will be around 30 billion m2 by 2038 from 15.8 billion in 2015. This growth would also spur the demand for conventional construction materials like cement, steel, bricks, glass, etc. Yet, these construction materials are highly energy and emissions-intensive and are responsible for the embodied carbon from the building and construction sectors. They must change in the decade of climate action even more so because the embodied carbon content in India’s buildings, especially in residential construction, is much higher; the way we used and still are building needs to change as our PM has pledged to decarbonise its economy by 2070 at COP 26. To fulfil these targets and commitments, it requires a clear and focused strategy with a holistic approach covering all phases of building construction, from the extraction of building raw materials to the disposal and recycling of demolition waste.

This session attempts to address the embodied carbon from the construction sector through discussions around the material efficiency methods in this sector.

Session Brief: According to studies and research conducted by IEA and McKinsey, floor area in the buildings sector worldwide is expected to increase 75% between 2020 and 2050, of which 80% would be in emerging markets and developing economies. In this regard, India is uniquely placed with three-quarters of the buildings, infrastructure and industrial capacity of India in 2050 yet to be built. Despite this demand growth the total CO2 emissions from the buildings sector need to decline by more than 95% by 2050. This would translate to more than 85% of buildings complying with zero-carbon-ready building energy codes by 2050. In addition, HVAC energy use constitutes the largest single category of building energy load. Under this scenario, an efficient airside in the HVAC sector becomes ever-more important to ensure meeting these net zero requirements while maintaining a high level of IAQ.