Continued efforts to prevent global warming

In this severe energy situation in Japan, efforts to improve the global environment and prevent global warming, such as reducing CO2 emissions, are becoming increasingly important. One of these efforts is to increase renewable energy. Since the earthquake, efforts have been made not only on solar and wind power generation, but also on geothermal power generation, which is one of the few resources in Japan. However, many of the locations suitable for geothermal power generation are located inside national parks, and it goes without saying that difficult issues such as environmental and landscape issues must be overcome. Similarly, with solar and wind power generation, it is necessary to sort out and overcome issues such as the limited number of locations suitable for geothermal power generation in Japan, which has a small land area. For this reason, the relevant laws must be established as soon as possible and a social consensus must be formed.

The other area is energy conservation. In today's architecture, various efforts are being made to reduce the environmental impact of newly constructed buildings, with some buildings achieving reductions of 25% to 30% or more compared to previous buildings. Going forward, further new methods and technological innovations, such as ZEB (Net Zero Energy Building), must be pursued. This is also evident in the gradual social acceptance of certification systems such as Japan's CASBEE and the US's LEED, which promote the improvement of the environmental value and performance of buildings. This has led to increased social recognition for clients and owners of buildings with high environmental performance. We have reached a point where we can expect further efforts in new buildings, and a high-quality stock is being created. To prevent global warming, we, as Architectural Design, must continue to work toward further improvements, and our role in this is significant.

Also, when we look at existing buildings, efforts are usually made to improve the environmental performance of the building in conjunction with equipment and function updates. In one recent example, in the renovation of a large office building that was over 30 years old, various efforts within various renewal plans were made to not only restore the performance of the building when it was new, but to achieve a performance level on a par with that of new buildings today. As the prices of raw materials such as crude oil, coal, and natural gas are predicted to rise in the future, investments in energy conservation are worth considering thoroughly from the perspective of LCC. Generally, the initial cost of an office building's life cycle cost is around 17%, and since utility costs account for about 30%, the effect of initial efforts is great, given that energy procurement costs are predicted to increase.

The industrial and residential sectors account for more than half of the total CO2 emissions. Japan has set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. As the global environment becomes increasingly severe, the importance of current efforts is growing.