Bill Clinton: $5 billion for building energy efficiency.
The goal of the program is to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings.
The program partners were:
American Association of Engineers ASHRAE, US Green Buildings Council (USGBC). With their direct participation, standards for the design of engineering systems of buildings will be developed to successfully achieve the goal.
Clinton noted: “Climate change is a global problem that requires a local solution. The unification of banks, business representatives and municipalities of large cities is aimed at solving the problem of global warming. Today this is extremely relevant and therefore everyone is interested in making the right decision. The participants of the association are going to save money and earn it, create new jobs and generally influence global climate change. I am proud of these organizations for demonstrating leadership on such a critical issue as climate change, and I want to thank them for their participation in this program.”
With 30 years of experience developing standards for new and existing buildings, ASHRAE is best suited to set standards for large metropolitan areas that want to quickly and effectively implement new technologies. Most of the existing standards for the climate control industry (HVAC&R) are focused on new construction projects, which, according to statistics, for the USA, for example, is only 2% of the total number of buildings. There is a need to influence the remaining 98% of buildings, and such work is already underway at ASHRAE. Its mission is to show building owners how they can reduce their buildings' energy consumption by an average of 30%. According to preliminary forecasts, the first results will be obtained at the end of 2008.
The following companies are also participating in the program: “Honeywell”, “Johnson Controls”, “Siemens” and “Trane” — which will be engaged in energy audits and developing a program for modernization of buildings and energy-saving technologies in reconstructed buildings.
Involved banks: Citibank, UBS, Deutsche Bank, ABN AMRO and JP Morgan agreed to allocate $1 billion each to finance megacities and private building owners who will not have to invest personal funds in these modifications, but the global energy market will double.
An initiative group, including municipalities of 16 major cities around the world, proposed city buildings for the first modernization for the implementation of an energy saving program, related to energy saving. These will be the cities: New York, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Johannesburg, Delhi, Mumbai, Karachi, Tokyo, Seoul, Sao Paolo, Bangkok and Melbourne.