Kenya moves to cut building sector emissions as urbanisation surges

Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN), the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK) and a coalition of stakeholders are working to quantify emissions that arise across Kenya’s building stock and construction sector value chain. 

This follows the development of a roadmap that will move the sector from diagnostics to delivery.

Globally, buildings account for roughly 37 per cent of energy-related CO₂ emissions when both operational and materials (“embodied”) emissions are included.

According to Kenya Programme Manager at GBPN Mumbua Musyimi, who leads the national buildings decarbonisation roadmap process in partnership with the State Department for Public Works, rapidly urbanising countries carbon footprint can rise quickly without targeted policy.

“The 2023 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction warns that while efficiency and clean power are expanding, floor area and energy demand are growing faster, raising the urgency for integrated action on codes, retrofits, clean energy and low-carbon materials," said Ms Musyimi recently during the AAK annual convention in Kisumu.

"Kenya mirrors these dynamics - strong clean-power progress, fast urban growth and a need to accelerate standards, enforcement and market transformation.” 

Over the past ten months, she said the Ministry and GBPN convened six multi-stakeholder forums to shape the baseline and test policy options. 

Kenya's carbon emissions grew significantly from 3.9 million tonnes in 1972 to 22.4 million tonnes in 2021. About 7.168 million tonnes or 32 per cent, come from the built environment.

This is according to the Baseline Report of Kenya’s Buildings and Construction Sector for Decarbonisation Roadmap (2026-2040) Development, released recently by GBPN.

In response, Kenya updated its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) on December 24, 2020, aiming for a 32 per cent emission reduction by 2030.

The State Department for Public Works is co-leading a national process to develop a Buildings Decarbonisation Roadmap, to translate global ambition into local action.

This, as it aligns with its updated NDC to cut economy-wide emissions by 35 per cent below Business as Usual( BAU) by 2035 and its commitment to the Buildings Breakthrough, which aims to make near-zero-emission, resilient buildings the “new normal” by 2030.

Ms Musyimi said Kenya’s participation in the Buildings Breakthrough elevates this work internationally and opens pathways to peer learning and finance.

The GBPN recently released a baseline assessment of the buildings and construction sector, which consolidates survey data, key-informant insights and secondary sources to produce a first national picture of energy use and emissions across building types (residential, commercial, public/institutional) and across the value chain (design and planning, construction, operations, and materials).

Musyimi said electricity and thermal energy used in buildings drive a significant share of sectoral emissions, coupled with materials matter, cement, steel, and other construction products carry high embodied carbon.

“The roadmap will encourage 'whole-life-carbon' thinking through actions such as specifying low-carbon cements, recycled steel, optimised structural design, and verified environmental product declarations as the market matures,” said Musyimi.

She said stronger integration of planning approvals, code enforcement and utilities coordination can lock in lower emissions and reduce long-term costs.

Government agencies such as (National Construction Authority (NCA), the National Housing Corporation(NHC), energy actors, she said, can embed roadmap actions in mandates within codes, permitting, audits, public-building retrofits, and disclosure.

Private sector practitioners and industry leaders can run pilots (net-zero public buildings, green procurement, low-carbon materials) and help quantify business cases.

She said the Kenyan process has employed a tiered methodology, from top-down national energy or emissions factors to bottom-up audits and building-level analysis, which has enabled triangulation of the data and a defensible baseline. 

According to AAK President George Ndege, the road to a net-zero future may be hindered if buildings continue to be designed by unqualified planners and architects. “Kenya’s urbanisation rate is among the fastest in the world, yet formal planning and architecture lag far behind population growth,” said Ndege.

 “A high birth rate and rapid rural-to-urban migration have produced towns and cities unable to cope.”

Ndege said local authorities lack coherent, lasting approaches, and in Nairobi, for instance, over half of residents live in less than a tenth of the city’s residential land area, shaped by non-professional planners or architects.

“Instead of master plans, our cities grow through necessity, survival, and improvisation. County government urban planning departments, underfunded and understaffed, chase after sprawling neighbourhoods with little success,” he said.

Misallocation of resources, he added, has bred dysfunctions that citizens endure daily, including overcrowding, unsafe streets and housing, and poor air quality yet the towns keep swelling.