$5B for energy efficient buildings

Buildings in 15 cities around the world are poised for an energy efficiency makeover under Clinton’s Climate Initiative Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program.

Raised from loans from five global banks — Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank , ABN AMRO and JPMorgan Chase, the $5 billion budget for the project will be used to fund the overhauls of the buildings at no net cost, which “more than doubles the amount for energy-saving building retrofits”.

Also on board are energy service companies Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Siemens and Trane, owned by American Standard, which will boost capacity by permitting “large numbers of building make-overs” and will “financially guarantee energy savings from the projects”.

Participating cities are: New York, London, Tokyo, Bangkok, Johannesburg, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Karachi, Melbourne, Mexico City, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Toronto. Governments have committed to “provide incentives for private building owners to become more energy efficient.”

Of the list of cities, I think Manila compares to Mexico City, Karachi, Sao Paulo in terms of necessity for such an overhaul.