UAE Sustainability Built Environment Blueprint

The UAE signed the Paris Agreement and, in 2021, was the first country in the Middle East to announce its target to be net zero by 2050. The UAE was also appointed to host the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

This further expedited the development of green policies at a national and local level, building on existing efforts across key sectors of the economy including power, water, industry, buildings, transport, waste and agriculture.

Based on the third and most recent Nationally Determined Contribution of the UAE submitted to the UNFCCC, the building sector represented 27 per cent of overall greenhouse gas emissions in the UAE in 2019. It will however deliver 85 per cent of the total emissions reduction targeted by the UAE for 2030.

This highlights the critical role of the sector in reaching the country’s climate targets and emphasises the importance of identifying the different enablers required to unlock those targets.

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Project Results

Setting the Scene – Local Targets

The UAE Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), third update, adapts the year 2019 as a baseline for its national and sectoral reduction targets. It aims for a 43 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) reduction target by 2030, across seven sectoral targets, where the building sector represents the most significant area of improvement at 35 MtCO2e, or 85 per cent of all emission reductions by 2030, and an emissions reduction of 56 per cent by 2030 for the sector. Key planned policy interventions include (UAE Third NDC, 2023)

Consequently, buildings provide the opportunity to secure just over 42 per cent of the energy intensity improvements needed by 2030 to stay within the 1.5C target.

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The UAE Built Environment Blueprint

With the above in mind, the UN High-Level Champion for COP28, Her Excellency Razan Al Mubarak, whose mandate is to mobilise global non-party stakeholders for global climate action, engaged with the CEOs of the UAE’s leading developers in a roundtable during a public engagement event in Dubai on 29 May to discuss key opportunities to enhance local efforts in the sector to decarbonise.

The roundtable highlighted a common desire for the leading businesses to raise ambition in decarbonising the built environment as well as shared challenges and the existence of many best practices already applied by different organisations in the UAE.

This led to the creation of a working group comprising representatives from the leading organisations, the Climate Champions Team and led by the Emirates Green Building Council, to map the challenges faced by local developers and find the key enablers to unlocking greater climate action. The chart below summarises the findings of a survey conducted among over 75 representatives from the industry, revealing that Policies and Regulations are seen as the key enabler by non-state actors of the built environment.

Key factors for unlocking climate action in the UAE built environment.

This effort falls within a bigger framework of ongoing consultations and business engagement led by the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment through the National Dialogue for Climate Ambition as well as the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure’s recent work and publication of “The Global ABCs Regional Roadmap for Buildings and Construction in the Arab Region” (April 2023).
This report will summarise the key findings of this working group, covering key opportunities across core dimensions of the building sector:

The report will also highlight current efforts being undertaken by the leadership working group in collaboration with the UAE Government, as well as the next steps that need to be taken, in order to co-design and implement both the policy and market enablers identified under each of the areas listed above.

Register your interest to join the UAE Sustainability Blueprint Workgroup .

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The Emirates Green Building Council currently offers five membership levels, which cater to Industry, Corporate, Individual, SME, and Student stakeholders within the Industry

EmiratesGBC hosts events throughout the year as a platform for collaboration and knowledge sharing across the industry

EmiratesGBC offers a wide range of training and workshops related to sustainability and green buildings to build capacity in the UAE and wider region.

The EmiratesGBC Green Building Tooltips is a rich online resource that provides useful information on green building practices.