Half the technologies needed to reach net zero by 2050 have not yet been developed, said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, on April 23—the last day of President Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate. Design firms and others in the AEC sector will play a key role in helping the world reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, according to those at the summit
In response to that challenge, Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) announced during the summit that the Troy, N.Y.-based university is partnering with design firms Thornton Tomasetti, HKS, OBMI, and Perkins & Will, as well as with Siemens, Lutron Electronics and the Brooklyn Law School to create the Institute for Energy, the Built Environment and Smart Systems (EBESS), based in Brooklyn, N.Y. The institute will work to “drive decarbonization of urban environments at the systems level.”