Establishing building environmental targets to implement a low carbon objective at the district level: methodology and case study

To face climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets are specified into national policies. In France, the objective is to divide by 4 (Factor 4) the GHG emissions by 2050 comparing to 1990. The built environment, as a main contributor, is targeted by these policies: the future 2020 French regulation will set up GHG emissions targets for the building life cycle. However, the implementation of this regulation and its labels into real-estate development is challenging because it is uncorrelated to factor 4, architectural and technical constraints due to these labels are yet unknown and targets are defined at building scale and not at the district scale. This paper offers some answers to this challenges based on a case study from a real estate developer who wanted to implement a 2025 objective to a new district in Lyon, France. It was done thanks to a review on Factor 4 and labels' history, on calculation of GHG emissions from 1990s building and objectives for 2050 and illustration of labels' constraints. Finally, objectives were allocated at building scale to meet the overall district ambition.