ONE UN - Decarbonizing housing and buildings at the City-Industry-Climate Nexus (WUF13)

Okay.
Perfect.
Thank you very much, colleagues.
Good morning, actually.
Well, just about now, good afternoon to all of you, to my distinguished planelist G on stage, to the attendees here in the room, and dear colleague and a warm welcome to today's side event, decarbonizing Housing and Buildings at the City Industry Climate Nexus.
This event is organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Unido, the Urban Transition Mission of Mission Innovation, and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.
My name is George Rambelli.
I'm the Director of the Urban Transition Mission and it will be my utmost pleasure to be the moderator of today's insightful event.
Housing and the built environment sit very much at the heart of our urban climate challenge, as well as of our global development agenda.
A fundamental shift is needed in this sector to achieve our climate goals.
The buildings and construction sector alone are responsible for roughly 37% of our global Co two emissions and account 28% of global energy consumption.
Furthermore, this sector in particular also drives nearly 50% of global material extraction, representing single handedly the largest material footprint of any industry on the planet.
Cities are very aware of this challenge and on the impact that it may have on communities, and they feel very strongly the responsibility to shape their sustainable future, considering how to leverage the potential also decarboniizing and making our built environment more resilient.
14,000 communities across the world have already joined the Global Covenant of Mayors for climate and energy and had already committed to reduction, aggressive reduction of emissions, and the implementation of ambitious climate adaptation strategy.
Within all of these plans, the built environment, housing measures are very much predominant and key.
An increasing number of cities across the world are also pushing their commitment even further by setting targets to achieve net zero emissions on the long term.
Among these, 145 cities from 52 countries across the world have joined the urban transition mission and have joined us in this effort of mobilizing decision makers across all levels of government to prioritize systemic measures to implement urban transitions.
So By bringing together by brokering technical, financial, regulatory solutions and approaches at each stage of the climate action journey, they try to not only address their most urgent and cross cuting needs, but also to shape the future of the sustainable future of our communities.
So it's clear that with such ambitious target, the role of the housing in the built environment sector is particularly important to shape a resilient and inclusive future that relies on action, on inclusivity, and on the possibility to make better quality for all available.
Unlocking finance for deep energy retrofits, but also ensuring affordable housing integrating clean energy systems into residential grids, capturing high quality building performance data, and building also strong regulatory framework and private public partnerships are among the biggest concerns that our cities are flagging when they are trying to solve the challenges in this specific sector.
This becomes every day more and more urgent considering the much of the global housing stock will exist by 2050 as yet to be built.
And this is about cities across the world that are really engaging on this challenge.
At the same time, rapid urbanization is intensifying housing demand in context where very often, unfortunately, affordability, equity, climate vulnerability are very pressing and increasingly pressing concerns.
So the decisions that we are making today on the material that we use, on the energy systems that we shape, on the building designs that we adopt, on the urban planning that we leverage, and on the long term investments that we are planning for ourselves and our cities for the future will deeply influence where we are heading and the way that our community will be shaped.
And they will determine very much whether our cities lock themselves in a decade of potentially very carbon intensive infrastructures, or rather if they are able to from now on to lay the groundwork for resilient, affordable, low emission urban environments.
So we must be candid today in this conversation about the challenges that we are facing, about the need for integrated responses that connect climate policy, housing strategy, as well as industrial transformation and urban finance.
We need to face the triple challenge that is ahead of us, a systemic interdependence that exists very much.
We're still treating housing as an isolated hazard in our cities, but decarbonization requires us to think differently simultaneously to address energy supply, to address energy efficiency, to address the massive footprint that construction can have.
Financing remain very much a challenge, in particular, the implementation framework that can guide our transitions in the housing and built environment sector.
Long term investment planning is still lacking in a lot of our communities and sustainable investment still remain a barrier.
Progress also depends very much on the financing structures and the possibility to work across level and in partnership with the private sector.
The social dimension is the other big and essential and crucial challenge that we are facing balancing environmental goals from one side with the reality of housing access and affordability, ensuring that our communities are not just becoming more sustainable, but at the same time, never with any of their steps are exacerbating issues around equity, are increasing climate vulnerability, and are suffering from the decisions that we are making today.
The challenges are significant, but the opportunities are also very, very big.
Today, we want to discuss how no single actor can achieve this alone and talk about how can cities, industries, international partners work together to ensure that housing built environment become drivers of decarbonization rather than a source of carbon locking.
So by addressing different perspectives, engaging partners from different sectors, city practice, social policy, national level policy, today with our panel, we will investigate how these different approaches can be integrated and how they can look in practice.
And we will take an honest look also at the status quo where we stand and exchange how this collective progress in key different sectors depends very much on this deep collaboration between city and industry.
So to get us started and to inspire us for our conversation, it's my great pleasure to give the floor to Mr.
Ricardo Sviano, Chief of the Energy System and Industrial Decarbonization Unit at Unido that will help us frame a little bit the conversation and share some key insights from a recent white paper that Unidos been developing.
I will not tell anything more.
Ricardo, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Georgia.
It's a pleasure being here.
Let me start by thanking, of course, the organizers of this event, in particular, the government of Azerbijan for giving us the opportunity to speak here.
Yesterday, actually, it was a I don't remember where, but I think on the walk on the lake, there was a sign saying that in Azerbijan you honor the past and you leave the present.
Something like that.
I don't know whether it is a motto, but I found it fascinating.
I would also add that you are helping us to look into the future.
It's already a few years that the government of Azerbijan is helping the global community to think about how the world should look like in future.
So of course, the cooperation with the NF triple C community, Cop 29 and now at the Buff in the cooperation with the UN habitat.
Those are signs of engagement from the government again, as I said, to honor the past, leave the present, but also look into the future.
I would say that Georgia put me in quite a tough situation.
It doesn't work.
If you can help me with the presentation.
Someone help me with the slide deck, please? Anyway, I wanted to say that Georgia presented very nicely the challenge we have in front of us and she mentioned a few numbers which are really kind of setting, what's No.
The problem is I don't see it here.
Anyway, it.
It's okay.
Now I know how to handle it.
To set the challenges, Georgia did a great job, but from the industrial perspective, let me add a couple of numbers that I hope would stay into your knowledge and your mind.
Humankind consumes different products.
The largest consumed product of the humankind is obviously water.
We use water for everything, for our living, for sanitary, for production.
The second good that humanity uses on a per capita basis is concrete.
We cannot decouple the growing of our societies from the use of concrete.
And every month currently around the globe, every month, a city like the mansion of New York is being built, and that trend will stay until 2050.
70% of the infrastructures needed to host the growing population in cities, as Georgia also mentioned, are yet to be built, and that is not only for housing, but to help people to commute infrastructures to provide services, to distribute water, to treat water, and so on and so forth.
All those infrastructures will be in a way or another, based on the use of cement, concrete and steel.
But big challenges if cement industry was a country, would be the third largest emitter of C two.
It's a huge challenge ahead from an industrial point of view and as I said before, from a development point of view.
So at Unidum together with other partners, we look actually into the matter, and there is a very clear link between buildings and industry and climate.
Of course, the building and the housing in the actual intersection between, as we said, industry, social development and infrastructures.
So decarbonizing that nexus becomes an imperative is a must for our communities.
So cities are actually, let's say, from a business point of view, from an industrial perspective, are acting as a very powerful and I would say localized, let's say, hubs for demand, while the industry is the one that would help in getting the supply of products.
I Of course, in making, let's say, the process efficient, we need to have a communication and an exchange between the two assets.
I mean, it's not anymore.
The demand and the supply needs to be, let's say, brought together in a in a coherent way.
So together with partners, and then I'm not sure whether Georgia you allow me to say that we are proud of the cooperation with the Urban Mission, and we are soon going to sign an agreement for cooperation in the next few weeks.
Anyway, stay tuned on that.
But since a few months, Unido is trying to again, discuss with different partners on how that nexus could be somehow developed and used as an opportunity.
And of course, I talked about the demand and supply side, but here in the next system, we have a strong link with the planning and with the financing.
In all those aspects, policy, technology, and investments, needs to be assessed from these three point of view.
So the needs for cities, in particular, as I said before, the need for providing services, expansion of the local communities, but also the need for industry to supply materials, and of course, the pressing needs that are coming from climate.
We didn't talk so far about the role of buildings in terms of water management, but that is also a chapter that may deserve, let's say, very deep discussion into the matter.
Not only the supply of sanitary water, but also the treatment of, let's say, from the use of the water in buildings.
So I would, let's say encourage you to go into the white paper.
It's publicly available, and then you will see how Unido together, as I said, our partners are looking into policy governance, the finance and investment, and the technology innovation.
Later on, also panelists will give you some example on that.
Then bottom line, we will not stress enough how enablers like development of skills at all these different levels, policy, finance, and technology.
Are necessary, but also the role of digitalization in supporting the process.
As I said here in our website, you have detailed examples.
I wanted to just to flag three of them.
For India, you will get the details later.
We are looking into the urban systems, but also we have projects helping municipalities to develop their financial and project pipelines and looking into ways to generate credits for their climate investments.
Something that is looking ahead in terms of the future of mobilizing public and private partnerships on long term investments.
We work, as I said, with governments, but also sub sovereign entities, including municipalities, but also communities and districts.
We go down granular to go into district level.
We try to work on at the investment level from planning to financial mobilization, all the blended scheme necessary for infrastructure building and finance up to the pilot of certain technologies and approaches and the full scale of implementation.
We work again.
We try to change the business model at the different level, but in a coherent way where cities, industries and individuals also are part of a joint, let's say effort here is where we are currently at Unido, let's say leading projects, but we are also active as a partner in other geographies.
Last point I want to flag is that from our perspective, the city chapter is part of a larger industrial decarbonization effort.
We have here three examples.
You can go into our website, you can see For us, TOA represents primarily what I was saying before, the efforts to change and influence the supply of green products, and in all those initiatives for our cities, let me say, are at the core of the demand.
With that, I concluded, Georgia, back to you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Ricardo and in particular for, again, stressing the urban complexities, these interdependencies that come across sector more and more and the type of systemic approach and partnerships that are absolutely needed to create those enabling conditions that can help us decarbonize, making our cities more resilient and more livable.
We will continue to really dig into what are the elements that can make us successful? What is the status quo? What is the role that different enabling factors can play from regulation, engagement across level to engagement with the industrial sector more closely in this type of work with our panel.
It's now the time to welcome them, please help me.
Welcome them with a warm applause.
Our panelists, first and foremost, miss Parvan Valieva, a member of parliament of the country of Azerbijan, thank you very much for having us here.
I would also like to welcome onstage, doctor Singh is a senior technical advisor of Unido India.
Thank you for being with us, doctor Singh.
I'm also delighted to welcome onstage, miss Hazel Yagopova, the Director of Seseco, the Clean Energy Center for Eco Region.
Welcome and thank you for joining us.
Will join us also, Mr.
Ols Sbroub from the African Development Bank.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
Last but by no means the least, miss Lea Renalde, program manager Officer for multilevel action at UN Habitat.
Thank you for being with us, Lea.
I would like to also welcome back onstage with us.
You heard from him.
You know him already, Ricardo Saviano Yes, please.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
I mentioned it before, we do have a tall order here, a bit of a discussion around how do we activate this nexus between cities and buildings, industry to make sure that our climate both decarbonized, both resilient, but also more inclusive is something that we can realize in the cities across the world.
I think it was already hinted at different stages how essential the partnership across level is to make sure that the right intervention can support the local level in establishing better regulatory frameworks, helping building new standards, but also new policy incentives that can support more sustainable construction and investment in the built environment.
I would like to start with miss Valieva And miss Valieva, may I ask you, what is the role in your opinion, that national policy can play in enabling cities transition to low carbon, to climate resilient, to a better housing system? Thank you very much, distinguished guests, esteemed speakers.
First of all, I would like to thank the facilitators of this event in order to invite us to discuss this topic because renewable energy also having green energy from wind, solar is very popular, is phenomenon in our country.
Recently, Azerbaijan is pioneering, also championing in implementing green energy projects.
We are here proud that Azerbijan also successfully hosting Wo 13.
Welcome again to Bkum.
We warmly welcome you.
Regarding your question, the transition to low carbon housing system is a cornerstone of Azerbijan sustainable urban development and climate resilience strategy.
As a member of Azerbijan Parliament, I can highlight proudly that we adopted energy efficiency law um, to provide essential legal, organizational and economic foundation to enable this transformation.
Parliaments play a crucial role in translating in this energy transition, not only by legislating and allocating resources.
We also as a parliament, prioritize renewable energy in budget discussions, oversight sessions, and also we ensure that green energy shift is not only a government agenda, but it is a national consensus.
We also as a parliament ratify international and regional green energy agreements where Azerbijan is signatory.
We also adopted a strong legal and institutional framework.
This is a It is energy efficiency law and according to this law, renewable energy source use is encouraged by our state.
For this purpose, incentive measures are implemented.
For example, Azerbaijan establish energy efficiency fund to provide some grants, subsidize loans to any kind of private sector investors, associations, even to individuals in order to support their clean energy projects, the startups initiatives as well.
So We, as I said, energy efficiency law we have, this law have a very specific foundation that gives to every citizen to use solar panels in their private houses to provide the energy demand.
At the same time, some tax and customs relief incentives we are providing for investors.
Also, we adopted Urban Planning and Construction Code.
This is also one of our main legislation that provides facilities to comply with the requirements for energy efficiency and the application of green technologies.
This is also support sustainable infrastructure and environmental responsible development models.
It is utmost important to mention about the reconstruction efforts in Karba and Eastern angezu regions of Azerbijan because we are now a building up from the scratch our formerly occupied territories.
But we also not only rebuild these areas, but also we transform these areas to modern infrastructure.
More than 1,500 homes in Karabakh are provided with solar panels in their roofs.
So every citizen can use this.
We are committed to have net zero carbon emissions areas here by 2030.
It means that these areas were not only the world's first carbon emissions areas, but also we will be in this list.
And a lot of public awareness we are conducting about smart use of energy in order to reduce energy waste, improving energy efficiency with media and thanks to, by the way, our media and the people who are active on social media, we continuously promote to reduce energy waste in our houses.
Thank you so much also for stressing the importance of thinking from construction, reconstruction to transformation.
Again, spelling out how the national level, not only through legal framework, but also via incentives, fiscal measures can help engage citizens themselves, not only in adopting clean energy solutions, but also in driving forward some of the renovation that it's needed for our building stocks.
Thank you so much for really expressing that important trajectory and how by integrating policy, we can support these processes.
Speaking of alignment, I would like to now zoom in a little bit around the alignment between the urban, let's say, planning, and the industrial planning when it comes to strategy.
Doctor Singh, I'd like to go to you and explore together, how do we align industrial system with urban planning to support low carbon and affordable housing? Specifically, could you build from your experience in India and show show to us some examples of what you lived in terms of importance of integrated urban planning, infrastructure, and industrial system.
Thank you, Georgia, Excellencies, distinguished panelists and participants.
Good afternoon.
I would like to mention only three things here.
First, about the country.
India is a very largely populated country of 1.4 billion people living in 28 states and eight union territories.
There are about 5,000 plus cities and about 34% of Indian population are living in these cities.
India is also very much in renewable energy and energy efficiency as Excellency member of parliament mentioned, we are having very, very big program on solarization, including solar photovolts already achieved about 160 gawatt of solar systems or different from rooftop housing to agricultural pumps to even the mat roads and airports.
They are having this solar power plants which they use for their use.
But coming back to the cities, the project which I have been handling with the support of F funding, it's basically in five cities and these cities are located at different locations, Bhopal, Gnu, Japour, Jabash.
So these are of different geographical ones as well as different economies, what we have done in this project, that the proper urban strategic planning with support from UN Habitat India office and they have prepared the urban sustainable framework of these five cities, which keeping in mind reducing the greenhouse gases and use more and more the natural energy sources, then we have five investment and demonstration projects for reducing the carbon and even having the circular economy from the west solid as well as the liquid.
In two cities, we have done the wastewater.
Actually, a lot of wastewater was actually going to the rivers or the lakes which were not treated, but because now we in India have national green tuna in force, they have very strict rules.
Every industry and the STP plant, they have to treat this wastewater.
From the wastewater, the interesting thing is that the industries are coming up for using this wastewater so that there's not much use of the freshwater or their boiler and other things as well as we are actually under this project recovering the biogas and the bioCNZ.
This biogas and bioCNZ has been put into the vehicles of municipal corporations, which are actually used for collection of door to door waste and these vehicles were earlier using the diesel.
So a lot of emission intensity has been reduced through this project.
I would like to give one example of one city Guntur where actually it was initially for push carts and through this project, we developed the electric three wheelers, more efficient electric three wheelers though in this country, a lot of electric buses are already deployed, but especially for cities for the municipal areas, Guntur through this project supported 220 electric three wheelers for Nuro lands because for neuros, large vehicles cannot go.
Interestingly, all the drivers of these 220 H vehicles are women who were earlier sanitary workers.
This has given them the empowerment and the dignity to the work.
This project this city has got the gender equilibrium mobilization award of unit of this year.
Another two projects are also having the better recovery circular reclamry through the composting and now after completion of these various strategic framework, the UN habitat is further taking up these outcome of this project to other cities and cities are actually partnering so that the greenhouses gases are reduced in a phased manner at this moment, here I will stop here, maybe flat Thank you very much.
Fantastic.
Thank you so much for these very concrete examples and also for referring to the circularity.
You talked about the wastewater, the materials, the production of biogas, but you also talked about the potential social impact that this type of nexus can have.
Thank you for underlining also this very important dimension.
But one of the things that you also mentioned at the very beginning is about the clean energy component and the engagement of energy efficiency measures and clean energy technologies.
I would like to go now to miss gova to Az, if that's okay, and ask a little bit of a question.
You are exploring very much our energy efficiency in building, passive design, but also integration of clean energy system can really make the difference on the ground.
In your opinion, What building energy efficiency measure have the greatest potential to reduce emission and also to scale? Because that's the other issue.
It's not just the adoption, it's the scaling across regions.
What role do you think regional sustainable energy centers like yours can play in promoting and accelerating the implementation of these measures? Thank you, Georgia.
Thank you for this question, and I am also happy to be here to join this panel and I thank all the guests for coming here today to these discussions.
Indeed, as already mentioned by the previous speakers, we heard about the individual experiences, one related to the Republic of Azerbijan another one to India.
Regulatory and practical measures and also projects implemented at port to improve how to contribute to decarbonization and also through that to the sustainable urban development.
If you allow me, I would like, and according to answering your question, I would like to mention, first of all, these general measures that are adopted, actually, that are usually implemented globally.
And later to go on to the more specific regional examples.
When we talk about the measures, the first one, obviously, what we can name is passive design measures.
That would be the building design, the shading, initial insulation, daylight optimization.
These all at the very initial setup, initial stage of the buildings would definitely contribute to decarbonization.
The second one would be improving buildings in envelopes.
More also referred as retrofitting measures.
These are insulation of efficient windows, roofing systems, heat loss reductions.
They are high impact measures and they are particularly important and relevant for our region for economic cooperation Organization region where the housing stock, along with the newly built buildings are comprised of a lot more of the old buildings and also the Soviet style buildings, so to say.
The third important and that, which is the main, so to say, mission of our organization, is the integration of the clean energy sources or clean energy solutions to the design, to the building of these constructions.
That would be solar rooftops, decentralized energy systems, district heating and cooling, smart controls, and district energy management.
And again, what I want to particularly underline that when we are talking about this issue, our focus should not be limited only to the newly constructed buildings.
We should not avoid the old buildings, which will still stay with us for the decades to come.
We are talking about the measures particularly relevant for our region, for the region of the Economic Cooperation Organization, also we have their Central Asia even wider when we go to the Pakistan, Afghanistan and from here we have Azerbijan Turkey.
The more so to say, general series of the measures implemented there, they are, among others, building energy codes.
And a distinguished member of the parliament mentioned that the adoption of the relevant energy codes for the buildings are very important measures solutions to this end.
The second one, more practical measure is the energy audits and management.
Conducted regularly energy audits where the different bos in the industrial buildings or the households to identify the energy leaks.
That obviously helps us to use energy more efficiently to solve any problems that may occur.
The third one would be financial incentives.
Again, as already, it was also mentioned by the previous speakers, financial incentives providing the government grants or subsidized green loans.
Again, very important for this end.
Allow me also to bring several examples, country specific examples that are that are undertaken in the region.
I Azerbijan, for example, the adoption of the green building codes are very much promoted and implemented.
Just recently, the government adopted green taxonomy, again, serving for promoting energy efficiency projects.
In Turkey, the energy performance of building regulations are enforced.
In Kazakhstan, the large scale retrofitting projects are underway.
Again, to help with these Soviet style buildings to put in place these retrofitting measures for the Soviet style buildings.
In Kyrgyz Republic, with the support of the UN and UNDP, The construction norms have been redeveloped, redesigned to include heavy wall installations, mandatory temperature controls.
When we hear all these country wise, country specific measures conducted by the governments, the parliaments within the specific countries.
But obviously, it cannot be isolated only country by country.
That's where the regional institutions like ours, Cecco come onto the scene, so to say.
And I'm happy to be here to share the panel and also the event itself is co organized by the Unido, which has this global network of sustainable energy centers.
And Sseco is a part of this global network.
Uno global network of sustainable energy centers functioning all over the world.
There are ten sustainable energy centers functioning globally and promoting, as I already said, renewable energy and energy efficiency.
In the globally.
The centers function in Latin America, in Caribbean, in Pacific, Asia Pacific.
Now we have here our recently established center for the eco region.
What, what our centers do for this particular projects to achieve these results, the targets that we are talking about here is to provide knowledge sharing, capacity building, and also to policy dialogue, technical assistance to mobilize financial and technical resources to the regions, to the countries.
That's what I particularly like, our Undo GN SC coordinator usually says that it's the Undo GN Sec.
This overall concept is by the regions for the regions within the region.
Let me just here conclude by mentioning one particular example.
Recently, at the beginning of the year, Tseko had conducted a clean energy Hackathon, and one of the winners of the Hackathon was selected under the special recognition category, Elgin Resay from Azerbijan.
His project Helio Sinc Initiative, he proposed a digital platform that provides weather synchronized heating guidance.
Behavioral recommendations to households, helping reduce energy use without new hardware or infrastructure investments.
What we particularly saw within that Hackaton and also particularly with Elgin's project that sometimes it's not only about the technology or about the hardware solutions, most of the time, particularly behavioral change is also very important.
You so much for giving us again some very concrete examples and also for navigating for us a little bit the role these energy centers are playing in different regions across the world.
We heard again the importance of energy codes, standards, the energy audits to have a clear picture of what's going on at the building level and to apply the knowledge that we have and the solutions considering both the new and the old construction.
We also heard about the application more and more of green taxonomies.
All of this data, this standard, this information in theory, and I'm looking now towards my next panelists Mr.
O Subrob should help.
The risk capture a little bit of interest from different investors.
I know you work as a senior advisor in urban development and infrastructure at the African Development Bank and a lot is about a structuring pipelines, leveraging blended finance, the risk in project.
In your experience, what makes a low carbon housing project sufficiently bankable, enable to attract investment? It's $1 million question.
Thank you very much and hopefully immobilize million dollars as well.
But as you said, a lot of the answers has been highlighted by the esteemed panelists here.
All you can say Bengal project is when you can see a stable return of investment and you can manage the risk in an investment.
And behind that, of course, there's a lot of details we heard about the regulatory framework is very important.
Clear policies, vision, strategies at national level, local level, all about innovative technical solutions.
Is it are pilot projects that demonstrates proof the concept of new technologies, et cetera? And then there's a lot of financial mitigation measures that can be used to de risk investments and bring in different sources of financing.
You mentioned blended finance, and of course, that can be everything from grant, concessional loans to commercial loans.
So there are packets of different sources, Again, for many investors, I mean, the environmental and social aspect is becoming more and more important and as a development bank, this is crucial.
We want to see impact and not least for the most vulnerable in our societies.
So if that can be demonstrated, it's very important for approval of financing.
Then we talk about everybody's talking about scale.
I mean, we have a lot of pilot projects, we have a lot of proof of concept, so to say.
But to really bring it into scale, we need and also to mobilize the private sector, not least in other financiers, we need to have a certain ticket size that really Yeah, can pay sin for pension funds and private investors.
And that requires we either bundle projects or look at a whole area in the city and maybe not only housing.
I mean, we are more in bulk infratcture, horizontal infrastructure than next housing, but then it can be combined with private sector doing the housing and we do the bulk.
So there's a lot of way to increase the whole investment package.
Yeah, last but not least, I mean, it's definitely crucial that there are institutions behind at all levels, national and local technology providers, et cetera, that has the skills, has the capacity, has solidity to manage these projects.
And if just one of these there's too much risk for that, it's becoming more and more hard to mobilize it, not least the private sector.
And the perceived risk in many regions is very high.
Often quite unfair, but that's how it is.
We need to handle it.
So there's a lot to do there.
Coming from the region of Africa, there's specific issues about land tenure.
Huge 80, 90% of the economy is informal.
They cannot pay mortgage, take loans, et cetera.
So there's a lot of these innovative models reflecting local needs, microfinancing incremental models, et cetera, that should be developed.
But it's very inspiring here, Azerbajan host here, how they put up the framework and incentives.
I mean, that's the way forward that really mobilize private sector, banks, et cetera.
Thank you so much for that insightful contribution and you're right.
I think we have a bit of I call it a pilot symmetry.
A lot of little action that maybe succeed but then somehow don't scale.
I think this is, again, the million dollar question, how do we bring it to scale? The issue around ticket size speaks to aggregation of different project that speaks again to how do we engage more proactively with the national level? How do we set maybe guarantees to help some of the investment that is needed.
I want to go to La now to R Ronaldo.
And maybe discuss a little bit, how is the contribution of cities of these sectors, but the cities in general looking like in the nation determined contribution that you see? You've been analyzing a lot of them in the past period, and in particular, how can housing and buildings be more effectively integrated in the NDC implementation and other broader climate strategies? Thank you so much, Georgia, and you're making my life very easy because I'm the last panelist, so I get to reflect on what everybody here has already said in this fantastic panel.
Maybe just briefly, I mean, the distinguished member of parliament talked about that welcoming us here to this wonderful Wharf, but this is also the exact same venue where we had Cop 2,091.5 years ago.
I think it's fantastic to see that Azerbijan is literally connecting the housing and the climate conversations in the same place.
I don't think it can get more beautiful than that.
Also to say, we've been talking a lot here about, of course, housing at the center and housing as really an enabler for many of the issues that we're experiencing in cities.
But I want to bring that point home that housing is also really at that intersection of climate ambition and everyday reality.
If we address housing and climate crisis together, it's really a match made in heaven that we can all benefit from.
I think I don't need to repeat what has already been said, but it's really housing is of course, where climate risks are felt most directly, but also where the solutions can be delivered at scale.
We talked briefly about the need to think about existing buildings and new buildings, but I also want to add specifically the buildings as well that are not adequate yet.
I think there's still more than 1 billion people living in informer settlements, and many more living in not adequate housing.
I think to also take that perspective as we are discussing this housing and climate nexus with cities, how we can make sure that whatever we're doing is also serving the people and the communities that do need it the most because we all know that housing is much more than just the building.
Us, it's really it's a home.
It's where our families live, where our kids come home after school.
It's where we eat, it's where we live.
It's where we're having a good time together.
I think to make sure that this is really also the place that can be a home that can serve as this place is absolutely critical.
With that, saying, I'm coming to your question, I swear.
So we've been looking into How are cities anchored in national climate plans and how is housing anchored there? Specifically, to really understand what are these opportunities there.
We launched yesterday this report, which is about urban content of the NDCs.
For those of you who are not familiar with my favorite three letter word and the nationally determined contributions, the national climate plans that have been submitted to as countries contribution and how they will achieve the Paris Agreement, they're being updated right now.
And what we're seeing there is that cities are really moving to the center and thinking about how we can deliver on them.
But not only cities, but also housing.
This housing conversation is increasingly being integrated into these national climate plans.
We're seeing that they are not just ambitious targets and aspirational statements being made, but that we're also seeing that there are specific actions being lined out in these national climate plans on how to get there.
What's the policies, what's the projects and what is the finance that we need in order to turn this into a reality? I think this is probably where we also want to wrap up and to say, Well, yes, we see cities at the center and we see that almost half of the NDCs are also talking about housing.
It's a great first step towards making sure that these topics can be thought together at that level.
But I policy, a document, the paper is, of course, not action quite yet.
It's a pathway to get there.
I think this is all the conversations that I've been having here is really around, well, yeah, we have these ambitions and we have these targets, but now we need to work together to really think, what are the specific projects? How can we get the money to support projects on the ground? What are the partnerships that we can unlock? That's also for us at UN Habitat, one of the big steps now.
Moving forward as the NDCs have been published, cities are there, but now we are working with countries to talk about implementing this in cities and with cities.
Back to you.
How to move from ambition to implementation, and thank you for the reality check.
I think it's always very important, but also for matching that with a call to action and reminding us that this is a great opportunity as well to make urban transformation happen a large scale since we talked about scale a few minutes ago.
Ricardo, maybe I'll go to you.
We heard a lot about now different elements of how we can make this work, what type of enabling framework can be established, what type of support is there to understand better the solutions and to approach also the finance sector and get this invested.
What do you think are the biggest risks if we continue to plan in housing in a silo without thinking about the city industry nexus and the supply chain embedded emissions? Thank you, Georgia, and a very complex question, but let me give an example.
One of the lever for decarbonization also of housing and buildings is to go towards electrification of certain services.
In every geography, we are looking into that from cooling to heating, from transport of people and Did I say heating already? I mean, cooling and heating, yes, I said.
But anyways, it's important so you can say it twice.
Yeah.
But just in general because I'm thinking but the point is one of the strategies is to try to move into electrification of the building.
Of course, coupling it with what was also mentioned, renewable energies, to the extent possible.
An example in Europe, heating and cooling one specific technology, which is the heat pump is gaining more and more traction.
There was a study saying that that is a very simple technology.
Very now is very localized in terms of value chain, so it creates job on site.
It's a very interesting model where we could see a lot of reasons to go and invest.
In Europe, that would trigger at least one terabat of energy demand, meaning that one eighth of the total electricity produced in Europe would need to go into that technology.
So that would bring, how to say, an impact on the energy systems, which is sometimes not really well understood.
If we put on top of that the impact on electrical vehicles, for instance, on electrification of other services.
What I wanted to say is that cities will need to plan everything based on future energy needs and Now the dialogue is being planned.
I mean, it has been initiated.
But still, we believe that that is the most needed and urgent topic to be discussed.
In that, the energy nexus with the industry may be crucial.
In Austria, there is one company producing steel.
They decided to go electric.
I mean, they use electric furnaces, meaning that in that plan, that's one facility is going to need one seventh of the entire energy supply of the country.
So enormous amount of, I mean, we are talking about numbers which need to require attention in planning.
And that's the challenge that we are always flagging.
Thank you, and not to throw something in the midst of this, we talked about litification, we talked about heating, data centers.
We are all looking at digitalization.
That's going to be another incredible challenge.
Yes, I think understanding better the potential and the risk for our grid in an interconnected manner indeed is very essential.
But sticking to risks and challenges, I'd like to go again to Parvan to miss Valieva and ask one of the biggest risks and challenges that I think we can see when it comes to housing its affordability.
So how can governments encourage private sector investment in sustainable housing thinking also about affordability? Yes.
Thank you very much for the question.
When it comes to risks, I think the main risk right now in the world is geopolitical tensions, wars, US, Israel and the Iran war around and all these affect to market volatility, energy consumption that make the producers and consumers of the energy more vulnerable because there is some uncertainty around this.
But for the investors, I think it's the main a feature main thing that attract them, it is peace.
We are now achieving peace in South Caucasus region.
We, achieving peace treaty.
We initial peace treaty with Armenia and now we are living in a stable in a peaceful area.
This is also attracting investors tourism.
In this context, two of credit rating companies, this is Moody and Fitch updated Azerbijan's credit and rating from stable to positive.
It means that it is a big signal to investors, to private sector companies to come and invest here because Azerbijan is like a door to Asia and also Europe.
A Azerbijan is the only country in the world that is bordering with Russia and Iran, so there are wars around, but we are in the safe.
We are right now the safest, the only transit country that is also safe uh, for investors.
Also, we have excess electricity reserve.
We have 2 gigawatts electricity, and this is also good for data centers.
That's why we signed contracts with USA and also some European countries in order to have data centers in our country.
Also, I would like to say that we are talking about energy grids, energy efficiency, et cetera, it's all about people.
The central pillar of what we are talking here, it's a human that we would like to have more clean environment for them, clean air for them, and clean energy.
I would like to uh to introduce them.
Cooperation is very important to work together with academics, think tanks, associations, private sector, government, legislators, lawmakers.
It's very important to have multi stakeholder approach in order to have affordable sustainable electricity energy systems in the world.
Also, I would like to mention some a the tax exempt, I said, incentives that provided by our legislation to the private sector.
It's a very good example.
It can be a very good example for other countries as well because we are supporting investors when they conduct, implement renewable energy projects when individuals or legal entities engaged in renewable energy production projects operating under the state procurement obligations are exempt from property tax on the assets used within the framework of these projects and land tax based on the relevant contract up to 30 years.
Property tax and land tax, they are exempt.
This is also motivate them to invest to environmentally sustainable solutions, smart technologies, as well as motivate public private partners.
Thank you so much.
I want to continue picking into what could make an investor be more interested in supporting this type of project.
I'll go back to Ole and ask along the same line, we heard about some fiscal incentive, this property tax relief, land tax relief.
What other measure do you see while you're exploring a blended finance model that can help private investors to be more interested in this type of housing and decarbonization projects? And what you just heard is really crucial to mobilize private sector, so it's very inspiring.
We could use more of that in Africa, I would say, but it requires a strong political will and stable institutions and long term vision.
So we will work on that.
But I mean, if we have grant or concessional financing, it can be used in many ways depending on where we are in the project development and matureness.
But overall again, de risking testing pilot testing technologies.
It could be used for guarantees junior capital in different forms.
So, I mean, depending on what are the sources, we can there's a chance to package the investment in different ways.
And again, it reflects it can also split the project in between not so financially viable elements of the project and a more commercial viable and different sources, spring fins within these different categories, so to say.
And Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think that's it.
Thank you so much again, and I think we have options.
We just need to be able to navigate them and to work together to understand what the solution that we can bring forward is.
I'd like to ask doctor Singh and a little bit more about barriers that are being faced on the ground in particular.
I don't know if what you have heard has been resonating with your experience, but what other barriers did you encounter? The implementation of your project.
If I may, I'd like to ask the same question also to miss gova.
From your experience, what barriers do you still see that we need to unpack? Are those the most important? Are the others? Maybe Mr.
Sting first and miss Jagova.
Thank you.
First of all, I would like to add one thing about the affordable financing for affordable house.
In India, the private sectors, you might have heard the name of Tata.
Bigger corporate alliance.
What they are now especially for the women e of big industries, generally, they don't find safe houses and nice houses.
With ADV they have come with some funding and that they are providing the goods, safe houses to the women workers, especially others also and very near to their factory and in house financing, there is no risk.
My personal because land is going year by year expensive.
If you finance some project housing project, you mortgage the land and the land prices are going up.
I think this is the sector where there is no risk.
Coming back to my project of Unido project, what actually is the challenges experience and the lesson learned in that SIAP project of Unido in 45 cities.
Actually, initially, the main problem was that there was a COVID outbreak.
So in 1919, and this project was just started in 1919 and it is basically executed by municipalities.
And for almost two years, these municipality corporations were busy to actually check the spread of COVID.
That was one.
Then another thing because it is a related to waste management and resource recovery.
So wherever they wish to have some facility, so it is like that no neighborhood in my backyard like that these plants.
So the more it was actually help from the local politicians that because those wastes are all created by these local houses or industries.
So finally, they agree that through with some safety measures, they agreed for composting.
Nobody wants that the composting yards would be next to them.
So that was also the major challenge that time.
But finally, with that now, like many corporations are now going to these new technologies with the electric vehicles so that there is electric vehicles, the per ton cost of transportation of waste is much less than the digital driven.
It is economically viable.
This has been proved from this project, as well as the wastew use also going to to the other industries, they are getting the revenues.
It's multiplying with time, but initially it was slow, but it's now because there is a strict rules for waste from Ministry of Environment and Forest and National Green Tude.
Again, I think this message about how important people are, even in accepting this technology in the this, it's coming out very strongly and as a potential barrier that needs to be thought about from the beginning.
We have to take the community and the local people engage from the very beginning from the planning.
Thank you very much.
Maybe then I'll ask the same question about barriers in your context, A, please.
Sure.
Thank you very much.
As we hear on this panel, we have different situations.
In some countries where we have all the policy frameworks in place, in some countries we have interested investors in the relevant projects.
In some countries we already have some projects ongoing.
But I would summarize and I will also again come and I thank miss Parva Maria for particular underlining, to say with the capsulo maybe even this people.
The notion of the people is very important.
In that regard, if we talk about the particular relevance to the project, the capacity building would be very much important.
Capacity building when we talk about that, we have heard yesterday I was included in another session as a speaker and before that, throughout all these discussions that we hear during this move the nexus of the city, industry, energy, climate, all of this.
This is all overall the one general process, and there we need the capacity that would be able to handle, to manage, and to participate in this process.
No one by one, not one cycle, not one chain, but as a whole process.
I was very happy to hear to see it yesterday there was this launching of Wolf Academy.
Actually, it is the first time within Wolf there is such kind of this initiative launched, established and the academy is aiming to provide, as we are talking about here, the knowledge to equip with the knowledge, those who are interested, the nexus wide knowledge so that when, how do we proceed with a sustainable urban development without leaving anyone or anything behind.
With that, I would like to thank you.
Thank you so much for underlining the skills, training, capacity building as an essential levers.
I spotted them also on Ricardo's slide at the very beginning around the very important drivers, and I think it's essential indeed to cultivate our vision, but also to accelerate the implementation of our urban transitions.
Maybe one more reflection from La around a the inclusivity of all of these processes.
How do we make sure that everything that we just discussed about, as mentioned before by our representative from the parliament here, is still people center? How do we not exacerbate inequality in housing layout? Thank you, George.
It's also $1 million question actually.
So maybe let me give you an anecdote, and this is from a conversation with a city official.
I'm not going to name the city, but a city that has some quite substantive amount of money at their disposal.
They said, so we have this budget.
We need to build housing because we have not enough housing, we have, definitely also homeless population of people not living in adequate housing.
I have this budget.
It costs me this amount to build standard housing.
It costs me much more to build housing that is sustainable.
So what do I do? Do I think short term or do I think long term? Short term thinking would be, I build as much as I possibly can because I have a crisis right now.
Long term is also to think about the people who will be living in this housing.
We all know and we've been talking about energy efficiency, quite a bit here.
We've talked about renewables.
We also need to think about, okay, well, we built housing and then somebody will need to live in it and if you need a heat pump or an air conditioning and the building is not well insulated, you might be stuck with a quite big electricity.
Bill afterwards.
I think this shouldn't be a trade off.
There are, of course, solutions and things that we can do there.
I just want to throw in one more number here.
Yesterday, I was sitting on a panel with somebody from Brazil and they said that over a third of the population in Brazil pays more than 50% on energy of their income, 50%.
I mean, so I think this nexus between how do we make sure that houses, that buildings are well insulated, but that they can meet the needs, and that people in the end are not stuck with a big energy bill is absolutely crucial.
If we get this right, we get a lot of other things right, as well.
So I haven't quite come to the solutions yet and I'm fully aware of that.
Um, But I think what is absolutely critical to that is that we do think about what is needed in that local specific context.
There's not one solution that fits all, but some solution in some areas, it might be to prioritize upgrading and retrofitting, rather than just focusing on replacement.
It's important and that's something that we at UN Habitat do a lot is to make sure that it's community led solutions, maybe some incremental solutions that can be critical that can improve some living conditions really with the idea of putting people and communities at the center.
Of these solutions.
That of course, we've been talking a lot about money and finance means that we make sure that these financing mechanisms are also inclusive and that the people that need that money the most can also have access to this so that it benefits the vulnerable communities.
So I think Just to wrap up, saying that this housing justice and climate justice, it's interconnected questions that should be going hand in hand and if we find the solutions are out there that help these city officials so they don't have these trade offs between, do I build a lot or do I build sustainable? These solutions are there.
It's just about making sure that we can unlock them and think about the people and the communities that will live in these and make them their homes.
Thank you very much investigating these trade off and have a mindset to long term planning and calculating the impact on different fronts.
It's not just about the environment, it's not just about the energy, it's not just about, we need to think about the people that live in this building.
Thank you very much, Leah for that.
We are at time.
I'll give you a very difficult task now starting from Ricardo.
You have one message, one takeaway that you want everyone here in the audience to go away with and you have 20 seconds each.
Very difficult.
Start thinking.
Should I also start talking.
I'm thinking in my view is finding looking for solution based on people and trying to look into the solutions before I was talking about demand and supply, I would probably turn and that may be a challenge for me for the next time to start everything based on people.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Who wants to go next? Look for volunteers, please.
Yes, I would like to underline that cooperation is important when we talk about regional and international cooperation, the needs and requirements of the specific countries to be taken on board, and just the regional cooperation within the country involving all the stakeholders and also regional and international cooperation.
Thank you very much.
Please.
Along the same lines, I would say bring all the parties on board for quite early in the discussion and be very concrete.
I think that's very important.
Thank you, Tsingh.
I would like to say that let the local community people come together and take them together throughout this journey.
Thank you very much.
Please.
We are here in this venue to make important global decisions to adopt global declarations and et cetera, but we must be honest that global declarations alone cannot change daily life, but laws do, budgets do, and political courage does.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I like courage.
I think it's important in this nowadays.
Very important.
Please Ricardo took what I wanted to say, so I'll add to that and say people and communities really the social fabric.
I think the main message is that we can tackle the housing and the climate crisis together if we work together, build the partnerships, build the collaborations, and it's starting from here.
Thank you very much to all of my panelists.
Please give them a round of applause.
I now give briefly the floor to dear colleague Bianca Filth.
She's a project associate from Unido who will tell us a little bit about the Bridge for cities platform and its advancement of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development at urban level.
Bianca, floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Georgia.
I'm lent to give this announcement from the Bridge for cities team as I actually work with Ricardo on other types of projects.
I'll give you just a little introduction on what Bridge for cities is and actually building on what your 20 seconds last remarks were about collaboration and partnership.
And building from local level up to the global level.
Bridge for cities is Units flagship initiative that drives inclusive and sustainable urban development.
Um, and it includes a knowledge platform to exchange knowledge across global platforms, but also city to city learning.
It also includes partnerships and technical cooperation with Unido to implement solutions on the ground.
And the last part, which is part of this announcement is an annual event that takes place all around the world, most of the time in Vienna.
Last year was in China, and so it is my pleasure to warmly invite all of you to the Bridge for Cities 2026, which will take place from 28th to 30th of October in Vienna.
We've touched a little bit on some of these topics, but the theme of this year is AI and green innovation, empowering a sustainable future.
It features a lot of fireside chats, mayor's dialogues, and a really diverse set of stakeholders will be participating.
Again, This is an invitation to participate to all of you and also to engage by nominating speakers or even proposing side events.
But in general, I encourage you to look at the website and to engage with the event.
With this, I'll hand it back to Georgia.
I'll just leave the last slide with the context from Unidas side and also the QR code to check out the work that we do on urban decarboniization and this phrase from our team specifically.
Thank you, Georgia.
Over to you to close.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Bianca.
What a journey.
It's been an hour and a half, but it felt like really a longer and deeper conversation than that.
We started from the assumption that because of the complexity of urban transitions, the nexus between climate, between cities, communities, their people, and industry needs to be reinforced and it will be challenging, but the opportunities are great.
Now, coming out of this discussion, I would say that message is being reconfirmed.
It's clear that for a long time people have said we need to stop working in silos.
It's now happening.
We heard some amazing examples of how national level are supporting policies that enable transition at the local level.
We have heard about finance being finding more and more interesting investing in this type of project.
We heard concrete example of how industry can come together with cities to make change happen on the ground.
We have heard how our NDCs, our nationally determined contribution are increasingly at least having a vision around implementing close collaboration between level to facilitate transitions, to facilitate transition also in the housing sector.
I want to thank once again all the panelists.
I think if we live with something is a few Ps that were mentioned a few times throughout the conversation.
Focus on our people, drive forward and really build meaningful partnership and make sure that the progress and the development that we are trying to build all together does not leave anyone behind, especially in our homes, in our housing sector.
So thank you very much once again and thank you also to all of you for joining us today for this important discussion.
Thank you.
Yes.