APEC Project Proposal |
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| Project No. | M CTI 02 2012A |
| Project Title | The Role of Standards and Conformity Assessment Measures in Enhancing the Performance and Energy Efficiency of the Commercial Building Sector |
| Project Status | Completed Project |
| Publication (if any) | |
| Fund Account | APEC Support Fund |
| Sub-fund | ASF: Energy Efficiency |
| Project Year | 2012 |
| Project Session | Session 3 |
| Sponsoring Forum | Sub-Committee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC) |
| Topics | Conformance;Standards |
| Committee | Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) |
| Other Fora Involved | Energy Working Group (EWG) |
| Other Non-APEC Stakeholders Involved | ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standards and Quality BCA Centre for Sustainable Buildings (Singapore) |
| Proposing Economy(ies) | United States |
| Co-Sponsoring Economies | Australia;Brunei Darussalam;Canada;Indonesia;Japan;Korea;New Zealand;Papua New Guinea;Peru;Singapore;Chinese Taipei |
| Expected Start Date | 01/09/2012 |
| Expected Completion Date | 31/12/2015 |
| APEC Funding | 330,475 |
| Co-funding Amount | 455,375 |
| Co-funding Percentage | 57.95 % |
| Total Project Value | 785,850 |
| Project Proponent Name 1 | Ms Renee Hancher |
| Job Title 1 | Standards Coordinator, Market Access and Compliance, International Trade Administration |
| Organization 1 | United States Department of Commerce |
| Postal Address 1 | 1401 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20230, USA |
| Telephone 1 | 1-202 482 3493 |
| Fax 1 | 1-202 482 5939 |
| Email 1 | Renee.Hancher@trade.gov |
| Project Proponent Name 2 | Ms Heather Grell |
| Job Title 2 | Deputy Chief of Party, APEC TATF |
| Organization 2 | Nathan Associates |
| Postal Address 2 | |
| Telephone 2 | |
| Fax 2 | |
| Email 2 | hgrell@nathaninc.com |
| Declaration | Ms Renee Hancher and Ms Heather Grell |
| Project Summary | The United States seeks to promote the free flow of trade in green building products in the Asia Pacific region by focusing on the fundamental role of standards and conformity assessment measures in enhancing the performance of the building sector. Standards-related measures are essential tools to achieve APEC green growth and energy saving objectives. This project will focus on four aspects of green building standardization: 1) building codes and use of green codes to achieve resource savings; 2) building information modelling to facilitate green building practices; 3) best practices in the testing and rating of products in the building envelope; and 4) mapping of building product testing requirements to identify and remove obstacles to trade. |
| Relevance | The United Nations Environment Program has reported that 40% of global energy is used in buildings and that residential and commercial buildings use 60% of the world’s electricity, so targeting energy use reductions in commercial buildings can make a significant contribution to GHG emissions reductions. At the same time, APEC members are looking to establish guidelines and mechanisms to foster more energy efficient practices and to reduce the energy intensity of their economies, and APEC’s urbanizing developing economy members have the opportunity to establish energy efficient building stock that can bring decades of economic and environmental benefits. This project builds on the direction from Leaders and Ministers to support the transition towards low carbon economies in the Asia Pacific region, examining technologies and products for commercial buildings that will result in a more sustainable infrastructure in the region, particularly for APEC’s developing economy members that are striving to develop policies and programs to reduce carbon emissions. Green building is an area where some of APEC’s developing economy members are currently working to adopt building codes and implement energy saving practices. The project will provide valuable information that can inform policy decision-making. This activity is also consistent with ongoing efforts by the Subcommittee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC) to reduce the negative effects that differing standards and conformance measures can have on trade and investment flows in the APEC region, particularly given that green building is an emerging sector where the standards landscape is fluid. The project continues the SCSC’s work on green building standards that was initiated by the United States in 2011. |
| Objectives | 1) Encourage consistent, transparent, and appropriate green building standards-related measures, thus avoid creating unnecessary obstacles to trade; 2) Identify best practices in standards and code development, and testing and rating of building products, which would be particularly beneficial to APEC members that are now considering policies and initiatives to facilitate green building, and would result in a cleaner, more energy efficient commercial building sector; 3) Build communications among the many stakeholders that play a role in greening the commercial building sector in the Asia Pacific region to advance collaboration and improve the effectiveness of building standards/code implementation. The project timeline and outcomes, elaborated in a subsequent section, ensure timely production of specific deliverables geared to achieving Objectives 1 and 2. Early project information collection activities will drive creation of a first-ever compendium of the current state of building code usage across the APEC economies in their work to achieve energy and resource savings, elucidating options and pathways consistent with avoiding unnecessary obstacles to trade. These results will be shared at the project’s first workshop in 2013, and will be published electronically for dissemination to all APEC economies and relevant stakeholders. Subsequent workshops will build on this foundation, delivering comprehensive expert reporting on the three additional focal areas in sequence. Comprehensive content from each will be published electronically in both as-reported form and as synthesized analyses for all stakeholders. |
| Multi-Year Approach | There is significant interest from APEC economies in enhancing the sustainability of the l building sector through best practices that save energy and other resources while also contributing to a low carbon economy. Given that this is an extremely complex subject area that utilizes evolving standards and conformance tools, and addresses critical energy saving policy goals, the APEC economies will be able to make well informed planning decisions if they are able to understand the full scope of green building standardization activities, which cannot be delivered in a single project. The plan, therefore, is to begin the project with foundational workshops on codes and building information modelling in 2013, and then progress to more in depth work on specific building products and the appropriate testing and rating best practices that can be applied across the region to facilitate trade, in workshops slated for 2014. With a multi-year approach, it will be possible to build up a network of Asia Pacific green building experts in the public and private sectors. It is desirable but not necessarily realistic to expect consistent participation from economies throughout the course of the project. To the extent this does occur, it will help to ensure the sustainability of the activities and collaboration across economies. The project also incorporates information collection activities to build information baselines as the project advances. The United States will self-fund several of the early work activities. There is also an expectation that ASEAN will contribute expertise and resources to this project. |
| TILF/ASF Justification | Many of APEC’s developing economy members are working to develop and implement programs and policies that will enable them to reduce carbon emissions. Economies recognize the commercial building arena as rich in opportunity to achieve energy and resource savings that can contribute to carbon emission reductions. Accordingly, these economies are now working to adopt building codes and other building regulatory approaches. This project is timed to deliver valuable, focused information that can inform APEC’s developing economy policymakers of other economies’ approaches and outcomes as important policy decisions are contemplated and finalized. Every effort will be made through the workshops to share experiences and agree on best practices that can be taken up by economies now beginning to focus on maximizing efficiency in the building sector. Funds are set aside to ensure the participation of APEC travel-eligible economies. The consistent engagement of APEC’s developing economies will be assured through invitation to participate in all four workshop activities and evaluation activities that follow the workshops. There will be focused attention to ensure dissemination of electronically published materials to all relevant developing economy representatives. These electronically published materials will include the proceedings (expert presentation materials) of the four workshops, outcomes summary documentation from the workshops, and the results of the project’s information collection activities. All materials shall include notation of sources of additional information, creating a compendium of information and resources to APEC’s developing economies at a crucial time in their commercial building-related policy decision-making. |
| Beneficiaries and Outputs | The project will deliver the following outputs:
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| Dissemination | Representatives of APEC economies and ASEAN economies, as well as of all other project-related stakeholder groups will be encouraged to attend the workshop sessions to receive the knowledge and collaboration outputs directly. The primary means of disseminating outputs, beyond direct participation, will be via electronic publication of reports and workshop documents on the APEC web site. These will be made available to all project stakeholders with no restriction on onward distribution to other relevant stakeholders. No sale of project outputs is intended. |
| Gender | Our consultations with the project concept development stakeholder group, in which both male and female participants are reflected, indicate no significant gender disparities in the four project focal areas. The project overseers are female as are the lead contacts in Peru who are spearheading Peru’s activities for workshop 1. The APEC TATF representatives that are working on this project are all female. For each of the four main project focal areas, a stakeholder advisory group will be formed. Women and men alike from all relevant stakeholder organizations will be encouraged to participate in this project advisory capacity. These stakeholder groups operate on the basis of consensus decision-making regarding project implementation details, such as workshop titles and focal areas, workshop agendas, workshop speaker selection, and methods of conducting workshop evaluation. For each workshop, speakers will be recruited to reflect those with strongest ability to contribute to the subject matter, without preference. Where subject areas may indicate divergences in male and female perspectives, the agenda will be structured to allow all perspectives to be elaborated. In the evaluation phase following each workshop, we will collect and use sex-disaggregated data from participants. This will enable us to determine whether gender may contribute to the perspective or experience of the participant and make any needed adjustments in consultation with the project advisory group. |
| Work Plan | The project will focus the work in several interrelated areas of green building standardization that can contribute to the project’s trade and energy saving objectives: 1) how building codes can deliver energy and resource savings; 2) the use of building information modelling to facilitate green building; 3) best practices in testing and rating requirements for specific products in the building envelope; and 4) assessing standards and conformance trade issues in connection with laboratory testing requirements for building products. The project will consist of four workshops that cover the four topical areas described above, as well as information collection activities that support the workshops, and an assessment exercise at the end to examine the overall effectiveness of this project.
2012 Begin baseline information collection activity on codes and the uptake of green codes in the Asia Pacific region. The consultant will be reaching out to APEC economies to gather the data necessary to complete the study. The project overseers will also work with the BCA Centre for Sustainable Buildings in Singapore, which is carrying out similar research. A Peru-led and self-funded survey on economy experiences in establishing green building policies will be sent to all APEC economies so there may be knowledge transfer among the economies. 2013 Two U.S. self-funded workshops: Workshop 1 – Lima, Peru (target dates: March 5-7, 2013) Workshop 2 – Madan, Indonesia (target dates: late June/early July 2013) on the margins of APEC SOM 3 2014 Workshop 3: spring, location TBD Workshop 4: summer/fall, location TBD All APEC members will be contacted to review and comment on workshop agendas; APEC members will be encouraged to nominate expert speakers and send delegates to the workshops. 2015 The project will conclude with an assessment activity that will strive to evaluate the impact of the project in enabling APEC economies to green the building sector. APEC members will have the opportunity to contribute to this metrics exercise. Given that this work is being coordinated with the ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standards and Quality, efforts will be made to hold some workshops in economies that are members of both APEC and ASEAN. The ACCSQ gave its support to this project proposal at the November 2012 ACCSQ meeting in Bandung, Indonesia. This project will utilize information from CTI 33 2010T, Sustainability in Building Construction (Commercial Buildings) Efficiency and Conservation, and past work in the Energy Working Group, but it is anticipated that some information updates will be required.
Each of the four workshops will be conducted using the same basic model for involvement of member economies, beneficiaries, and others: Workshop 1: Exchange of Best Practices in the Design and Implementation of Building Codes and Green Codes: Previous APEC work has focused on reviewing green building rating programs. However, many APEC economies prefer the use of mandatory codes to rapidly implement best green building practices and bring about the quickest reduction in GHG emissions. This activity would address expertise in the development and/or adoption of green building codes in APEC economies, looking at the experiences of economies that already have such codes as well as economies that are now undertaking such efforts. Green building codes, standards and rating systems, seek to reduce the negative impacts of the built environment (both new and existing construction) on the natural environment by addressing primary areas of concern that include natural resource preservation, material resource conservation, water conservation, energy conservation, air quality and indoor environmental quality and comfort. Monitoring, review and assessment are critical to ensure that such codes fulfil their objectives, and are presently an intense area of discussion. This project will bring together relevant stakeholders to consider guidance in this area. Peru has initiatives under way to diversify its energy matrix and will host the U.S. self-funded code workshop in Lima on March 5-7, 2013. Workshop 2: Building Information Modelling to Facilitate Green Building Practices: This part of the project continues to build the foundation for APEC economies to make environmental gains in the commercial building space. A Building Information Model (BIM) serves as a digital repository for all relevant information on the physical and functional characteristics of a facility. It serves as a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility and provides a reliable basis for decisions during the entire life-cycle. BIM facilitates collaboration by different stakeholders to insert, extract, update or modify information in the repository to support and reflect the roles of that stakeholder. The functionality, reliability and utility of BIM is dependent upon open standards for interoperability. The state of play in BIM will be the focus of a second U.S. self-funded workshop planned for June 2013.In this part of the project, the focus will be on establishing common terms and definitions and information exchanges for green and high-performance buildings. Existing international standardization activities will be included in the effort to develop information exchange schemes and identify tools that can be used to express the necessary information. Establishing these information exchanges will facilitate trade in green products. Workshop 3: Elaboration of Best Practices in Testing and Rating Requirements for Products in the Building Envelope: This work links to the Energy Smart Communities Initiative on designing and operating smart buildings, and the Cooperative Energy Efficiency Design for Sustainability (CEEDS) project of the Energy Working Group and its Expert Group on Energy Efficiency and Conservation. The EGEE&C has been working to identify best practices for building products and has already completed projects for cool roofs and energy efficient windows. This activity will emphasize progress in certain additional building materials (steel, cement, framing, windows and doors, insulation, etc) that can contribute to energy and resource savings. Workshop 4: Laboratory Testing Requirements as a Non-tariff Barrier for Ceiling and Flooring Products: The ceiling and flooring industry faces numerous obstacles in delivering its products for use in commercial buildings in the Asia Pacific including incomplete information about testing requirements, redundant and unnecessary tests and burdensome reporting requirements. In this activity, data will be collected to identify regional testing requirement and reference standards, and build a framework that ties testing requirements and data collection and reporting together. Outcomes and information exchange would then occur in a workshop to be organized in 2014. Evaluation Activity Another element budgeted for in this project is an evaluation activity. In late 2014 or early 2015, a consultant will assess changes in the region, such as revisions to building codes, the status of development of BIM definitions for green buildings, and any shift toward alignment of testing and rating requirements for green products. This will serve to validate the success of this project. |
| Risks | We view the project-related risks as low and being mainly associated with attracting member economy participation in the four workshop activities. We intend to mitigate this risk via the following: § Up-front survey of demand – We designed the project program of workshops in close consultation with a broad-representation stakeholder group attuned to public and private sector demand for the knowledge. The project design also reflects findings from the 2011 APEC SCSC green building work, in which stakeholders indicated their interest in furthering areas of study contemplated in this work plan. § Continuing engagement - We intend to collaborate closely with the member economies as workshop planning evolves, agendas are defined, and speakers are selected. We intend to maintain strict internal deadlines for finalizing agenda and speaker selection. § Clear marketing - We have a clear marketing strategy for the workshops, providing clear and concise information about the workshop objectives and content, and sufficient time for member economies to designate representatives to participate. § Prompt dissemination of results to all stakeholders and availability for follow-on engagement to put inquiring stakeholders in direct contact with relevant experts. § Attuned review of evaluations – This will enable us to factor feedback into enhancing subsequent phases of the project. We worked hard to design a project that builds on, rather than duplicates, the work of other APEC fora or non-APEC parties. |
| Monitoring and Evaluation | Monitoring: The components of the project are interrelated and will contribute to facilitating trade in green building products in the Asia Pacific region. The activities to be undertaken in each element of the project will drive towards achieving this objective. The Project Overseer will assemble a public-private advisory group for each activity and establish a dedicated reporting schedule to ensure that each activity within the project is well executed and meets its goals and objectives. Each year, the Project Overseer will complete the required Monitoring Report and submit it via the APEC Secretariat Program Director.
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| Linkages | · Other fora: What role will they play in the planning and implementation of the project? How will they share in the benefits?
The APEC Energy Working Group and its Expert Group on Energy Efficiency and Conservation, which has ongoing work focused on rating requirements for components of the building envelope including windows, heating, ventilating and air-conditioning equipment, and cool roofs, are partners in this project. In addition, this project can link into the Energy Smart Communities Initiative since buildings are a significant element of the community landscape and a major user of energy. The project proposal was share with the EGEE&C at its November meeting in Chinese Taipei and will receive regular updates for the duration of the project. · Non-APEC stakeholders: What role will external stakeholders play in the planning and implementation of the project? How will they share in the benefits?The ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standards and Quality (ACCSQ) is a major partner in the execution of this program, providing input on content and contributing expert speakers and appropriate participants. The SCSC and the ACCSQ worked together to organize the September 2011 green building workshop in Singapore that was a component of the 2011 green building project led by the United States. This was the first-ever joint APEC-ASEAN workshop. The United States initiated work on green building in APEC in 2011 with a multifaceted program that consisted of an SCSC survey of green building standards and codes in the region, two case studies, and two workshops. Key outputs include: 1) Trade Impact of Life Cycle Analysis in Multi-Attribute Certification Programs for Flooring Materials and Plumbing Fixtures in Five Focus APEC Member Economies http://publications.apec.org/publication-detail.php?pub_id=1256; 2) Trade Impact of Green Commercial Building Rating Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region http://publications.apec.org/publication-detail.php?pub_id=1259; 3) Sustainability in Building Construction (Commercial Buildings) - Efficiency and Conservation Surveyhttp://publications.apec.org/publication-detail.php?pub_id=1144; 4) Green Buildings and Green Growth: The Enabling Role of Standards and Trade - Meeting Outcome http://publications.apec.org/publication-detail.php?pub_id=1146. The work in 2011 was quite helpful in clarifying the Asia Pacific’s green building landscape and providing some baseline data. The project provided an overview of the APEC economies policies, standards and codes, and rating systems in the arena of sustainable buildings. Broad objectives were 1) increasing awareness of, and participation in the development of, codes and standards to support more efficient, better aligned policies that might facilitate trade and investment; 2) information exchange to enable greater consistency in evaluation of products and costs; 3) building communication networks across stakeholders and relevant experts. This new work goes to the next stage of addressing policies and practices that impact trade of specific building technologies and building products.· APEC’s comparative advantage: Why is APEC the best sources of fund for this project? There is significant interest from APEC economies in enhancing the sustainability of the commercial building sector through best practices that save energy and other resources while also contributing to a low carbon economy. Given that this is an extremely complex subject area that utilizes evolving standards and conformance tools, and addresses critical energy saving policy goals, the APEC economies will be able to make well informed planning decisions if they are able to understand the full scope of green building standardization activities, which cannot be delivered in a single project. The plan, therefore, is to begin the project with foundational workshops on codes and building modelling and then progress to more in depth work on specific building products and the appropriate testing and rating best practices that can be applied across the region to facilitate trade. |
| Project Management | Project management is conducted by the Project Overseer (PO). Responsibilities of co-sponsors are negotiated by the PO with co-sponsors as early in the project cycle as possible and confirmed in writing to ensure strong mutual understanding. The PO works in close collaboration with multi-stakeholder advisory committees for project implementation. The PO extends invitations to relevant government, industry, organization and academic stakeholders, and recruits advisory committees for each sub-project (workshop). The PO sends relevant materials to advisory committee members, and conducts regular (bi-weekly or monthly, depending on the stage of the sub-project) meetings of the advisory committee. Decisions regarding project implementation are made on a consensus basis in advisory committee meetings, following multiple opportunities for committee members to share their views.Detailed Minutes of each advisory committee meeting are recorded, disseminated to each respective committee member, and are maintained electronically by the Project Overseer. This provides a detailed project record that may be utilized to ensure continuity of project operations in the event the P O changes during the life of the Project. |
| Sustainability | The enhanced knowledgebase and new fora for information exchange and collaborative dialogue are outcomes of the project with inherent sustainability. This is highly useful in this new area of green building. The expectation is that policy makers in the APEC region can draw upon the information developed through this project in establishing national programs in a manner that will not be trade restrictive. Many follow on activities will occur in standards development bodies, code organizations and other organizations. The expectation is that representatives from the participating economies will engage in these bodies moving forward. The knowledgebase will be fully documented in electronic format for portable reference by stakeholders going forward. Participants will be fully empowered to return to their home economies and share any information gained with relevant stakeholders. Likewise, relationships and dialogues launched or furthered via project workshop outcomes may be maintained by stakeholder representatives independent of project support. At the conclusion of this project, the expectation is that there will be enhanced transparency about green building standards, codes, rating tools and conformity assessment approaches. |
| Project Overseers | Renee Hancher, Standards Coordinator, Market Access and Compliance at the United States Department of Commerce, will serve as Project Overseer. She has experience organizing past SCSC workshops for the United States, including CTI 01 2010T Capacity Building in Food Safety: Developing Food Safety Plans for the Supply Chain (November 2010) and CTI 33 2010T Green Buildings and Green Growth: Approaches to Encouraging a Positive Green Building Climate (September 2011). Ms. Hancher has been working on APEC matters since 2008, with a focus on standards and conformity assessment and good regulatory practice.Supporting Ms. Hancher, is Joanne Littlefair, International Trade Specialist, United States Department of Commerce. She specializes in international competitiveness issues affecting U.S. building materials and building product manufacturers, with a focus on the global Green Building sector. Ms. Littlefair’s portfolio encompasses both trade policy and trade promotion initiatives. Heather Grell is the Deputy Chief of Party of the U.S. funded APEC Technical Assistance and Training Facility, which is designed to support APEC and the APEC Secretariat in furthering regional economic integration, support the Bogor Goals of free and open trade, and help APEC become a more strategically managed regional institution. Ms. Grell has successfully managed and/or implemented several technical assignments. |
| Cost Efficiency | This project maximizes the cost efficiency of human, time and financial resources by 1) engaging, in a neutral and effective forum, the relevant stakeholders in the region that effect policy changes in the building sector. The previous APEC activities on green building have served to identify a network of regional building standards experts who will be a reference point and resource for this project. Their awareness of the foundational APEC work and interest in further engagement assure that the new work will be productive. The project will yield best practices and tools that can be applied or included in policy by ministries and regulators who have noted their support for reducing barriers to trade and achieving APEC energy saving targets. |
| Drawdown Timetable | Nil. |
| Direct Labour | Contractors will be used for two activities: the research report in Year 1 and the evaluation in Year 3. Assumption is that different contractors will be used for these two activities. In the case of the report, the consultant will conduct a desk study collecting baseline information on building codes and green building codes that are in use in the Asia Pacific region. The intent is to make clear the essential components of building codes and the elements that make a code “green.” Economies will be able to learn what is happening in other economies and take some best practices into account in their policy activities. The consultant will prepare the report and deliver the findings at Workshop 1 in 2013. For the evaluation, the consultant will prepare a document that identifies changes in the Asia-Pacific region, ongoing and contemplated, that correspond to the project activities on codes, BIM and testing and rating requirements. |
| Waivers | None sought. |
| Are there any supporting document attached? | No |