May 21, 2007—President Bill Clinton has announced the creation of a global Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program, a project of the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), which will assist cities in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
This program brings together four of the world’s largest energy service companies (ESCOs), five of the world’s largest banks and sixteen of the world’s largest cities in a coordinated effort to significantly reduce energy use in buildings.
Buildings are responsible for more than 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in most cities and over 70 percent in mature cities, such as New York and London. This program will provide both cities and their private building owners with access to the necessary funds to make retrofits—energy saving improvements and installation of energy-efficient products—to their buildings, typically leading to energy savings between 20 to 50 percent, according to officials.
An initial group of fifteen of the world’s largest cities has agreed to participate in the retrofit program, and offer their municipal buildings for the first round of energy retrofits: Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto. These participating cities have committed to work with the Foundation and its expert partners to develop programs to audit their buildings and to implement retrofits that improve their energy efficiency.
For more information, visit the Foundation’s Web site.
