Transcriber:
Director: Sound rolling.
Take one, mark.
Katie McGinty: We spend something
like 90 percent of our whole life indoors.
It's everything from your own home
to companies and factories.
We get married in those places,
our children are born,
some great scientist invents a cure
for disease in those buildings.
But buildings are some bad news
for the climate.
[In the Green: The Business
of Climate Action]
[Presented by TED Countdown
and The Climate Pledge]
[Katie McGinty
Company: Johnson Controls]
[Sector: Buildings
Location: USA]
Buildings contribute about 40 percent
of global greenhouse gas emissions.
They represent the biggest growing piece
of electricity consumption
and demand in the world.
We're not cracking
this climate change challenge
unless we decarbonize those buildings.
When you look at a building,
there are key aspects of it
that enable it to run.
It’s the heating and cooling;
it’s the lighting;
it's all of our appliances.
All of those things together add up
to a very significant energy load
and a big cost.
That's what we can go after.
Replace the old HVAC.
Get rid of the old incandescent lights
and add the new LEDs.
Put in those windows
that have high efficiency.
That's where digital smarts come in,
where you can add sensors
in a building that say,
“Hey, nobody’s in this part
of the building,
so let's ratchet back
that air conditioning
that’s otherwise blasting.”
And don't worry about the upfront cost.
Why?
Because upgrading will generate savings
that now can be used to finance
the project in the first place.
You're cutting 20, 40, 80 percent
of that energy bill.
When organizations begin
to look at this journey
toward sustainability and net-zero,
a whole lot of unexpected promise
comes to the fore.
The head of a public
housing authority, for example,
just wanted to cut some costs,
but get into the effort.
And here's what came to life.
That the new community solar garden
became green energy efficiency tech jobs
for the local community.
And that translated into something else:
a sense of empowerment,
ownership, engagement by that community,
and effort to bring cost down
lifted the entire community up.
We're at a turning point
where piecemeal action
is catalyzing whole communities
to take action like never before,
and they can do it on the basis
of the tangible examples
that prove the point
that climate action is actually
not only good for the environment,
but it cuts costs and it creates jobs
at the same time.
You know, buildings
are pretty important in our lives.
Buildings aren't just bricks and mortar.
With technology and partnership,
we can change those buildings
into flexible, agile assets,
and it is bringing us the opportunity
to tackle big issues like climate change.