Cities offered $5bn to 'green' old buildings

London, 17 May: Former US president Bill Clinton yesterday announced a $5 billion programme to retrofit buildings in 15 cities around the world to make them more energy efficient.

Under the programme, public buildings such as fire stations, as well as commercial buildings owned by the private sector, will be able to apply for funding to install energy efficiency improvements. The plan is a joint effort of the Clinton Climate Initiative and C40, a group of mayors from various global cities, chaired by London's mayor Ken Livingstone.

Announcing the programme at a C40 conference in New York, Clinton said: "The businesses, banks and cities partnering with my foundation are addressing the issue of global warming because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's good for their bottom line. They're going to save money, make money, create jobs and have a tremendous collective impact on climate change all at once."

Four major energy service companies – Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Siemens and Trane – will conduct energy audits on the buildings, perform the retrofits, alongside local contractors, and also guarantee the expected energy savings.

The firms have agreed to scale up their operations in the first 15 cities to participate in the scheme: London, New York, Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, Melbourne, Mexico City, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo and Toronto.

Financing will be provided by ABN Amro, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and UBS, who have agreed to arrange $5 billion between them to pay for the programme.

Livingstone said the programme would help meet his own target of reducing emissions from public buildings owned by the Greater London Authority by 20% in the next three years. "But the full opportunity is much larger – nothing less than to 'green' London's entire major building stock – commercial and public sector. If every building in London were to take advantage of this offer we would cut 5 million tonnes of carbon from London's 44 million-tonne annual carbon footprint," he added.

Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, said: "Mayors are responsible for coming up with pragmatic solutions and implementing them effectively – and this programme will allow us to do that."

Gary Page, head of global markets at ABN Amro, which has agreed to arrange $1 billion, said: "Buildings consume 40% of the world's energy and account for one third of greenhouse gases. Increasing the energy efficiency of their facilities can make a significant impact, both to an organisation's carbon footprint and its bottom line."