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The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia's Environmental Emergency resources

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 O U R H U M A N WO R L D If we can get our city lives right—especially our buildings and our transportation—we will be well on the way to meeting the challenge of environmental sustainability. More than ever, cities are where the people are, so sustainability efforts must focus on urban areas. Cities also offer efficiencies of scale, meaning that urban initiatives are likely to offer higher payback over shorter periods for investments in green buildings and more energy-efficient transit. “Better cities means resolving issues of housing, density, technology, infrastructure and aesthetics,” says Bruno Lafont, the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest cement company, the Lafarge Group, whose future depends on the growth of cities in Asia. For custom- ers in countries like China and India, cost matters in a way that it does not for the rich world, where people have the money to pay a premium for more environmentally benign products. Lafarge and other leading cement and building materials companies cannot ignore the reality that they are competing in extremely price-sensitive markets, but they simultaneously are trying to take into account the long-term impact their products have on the environment and society. “How can we reduce the cost of construction when we take into account the life cycle of the building and not just the cost of construction?” asks Lafont. “On sustainability, how do we reduce the environmental footprint of the cities?”2 These are important questions—and maddeningly complex ones. Think of energy use as a three-legged stool. One leg of the stool is build- ings; the energy used to heat, light, and cool buildings accounts for about one third of our total energy consumption. The second leg of the stool is transportation, with cars, trains, trucks, buses, and planes accounting for roughly one third more. The third leg of the stool is manufacturing, min- ing, and construction. Cities obviously figure prominently in the first two legs, but they are important for this final leg, too. Coal mining uses sig- nificant energy; coal in turn is largely used to generate electricity, most of which is used by city dwellers. More efficient buildings reduce the need for coal-fired power plants, and designing buildings to incorporate efficiencies and lengthen their useful lives cuts down on energy use by the construc- tion sector. Each leg of the stool, in other words, affects the others, and the energy-saving opportunities available in a virtuous circle of more efficient buildings, transport, and city design are enormous. But this feedback cycle can work in the opposite direction as well, and large parts of Asia suffer from a vicious circle of inefficient buildings, transportation, and cities. Asia also has a handful of exemplary cities that are consciously using their density as an advantage in ensuring an environment that is more

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