The 8th IEA-Tsinghua Joint Workshop: Making Buildings Zero-Carbon Ready by 2030 – Near-term Solutions for Heating Systems

Several countries around the globe have committed to target towards achieving carbon neutrality in the next decades. Buildings operations account directly and indirectly for approximately 30% of global energy sector emissions, and will play a critical role in meeting these targets. In 2021 direct emissions from heating buildings grew by 5.5%, reaching a new high of 2 500 Mt CO2, 80% of direct CO2 emissions in the buildings sector. Despite this increase, CO2 emissions from energy use for heating are only 1.5% above 2010 levels. Aligning with governments’ targets, whilst at the same time addressing the ongoing energy crisis, will require a rapid acceleration of the rate of improvement.

The 8th IEA-Tsinghua Joint Annual Conference Making Buildings Zero-Carbon Ready by 2030 – Near-term Solutions for Heating Systems, will bring together leading global experts from government, academia, think-tanks and the private sector to share experiences on decarbonisation of building heating systems. The workshop, outcome of the longstanding collaboration between IEA and the Building Energy Research Centre (BERC) of Tsinghua University, focused on the near-term policy, technology and financing options available for governments to ensure that space heating in the buildings sector can remain on track to meet decarbonisation goals in the next decade whilst delivering energy savings needed to protect consumers from high energy costs.

Session 1: Near-term outlook for buildings sector decarbonisation – global and regional perspectives

Session 2: Accelerating decarbonisation of building heating systems – policy and technology solutions

Session 3: Roundtable on “finding near-term solutions that can support decarbonisation of heat in buildings”