Climate Terms and Tools

Facilities face many challenges related to climate change, including reducing emissions, adapting to new conditions, and increasing resilience. This page serves as a primer for building personnel who are new to the topic or looking for additional resources.

Terminology

Understanding climate change's unique vocabulary is the first step. The definitions below have been compiled by federal experts in the field.

Key Concepts

Climate

Climate is a description of an area's average weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over long time intervals, generally decades or centuries.

Weather

The meteorological conditions at a specific location in an immediate or near-term time horizon (hours, days, or a week). Rain, snow, wind, hurricanes, and tornadoes can be considered weather events.

Climate Change

The long-term change in average and expected weather patterns, and particularly the warming of the planet. Some examples of the impacts of warming temperatures are rising sea levels, ice melt and shifts in plant blooming times.

Climate Literacy

The understanding of an individual’s and organization’s influence on climate and climate’s influence on an organization and society. It supports individuals and organizations in making informed decisions, plan approaches, and implement solutions to climate adaptation or mitigation.

Climate Mitigation

Activities, investments, and projects intended to reduce the GHG emissions and ultimate impacts of human activity on the planet’s atmosphere, physical processes, and biosphere. Synonymous with GHG reduction. Decarbonization is a strategy that is part of broader climate mitigation efforts.

Greenhouse Gases (GHG)

Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. These include: Carbon dioxide (CO₂); Methane (CH₄); Nitrous Oxide (N₂O); Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); Perfluorocarbons (PFCs); Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF₆) and Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF₃).

Climate Adaptation

Actions that address the adjustment in natural or human systems in anticipation of or response to a changing environment in a way that effectively uses beneficial opportunities or reduces negative effects. Some examples include hardening infrastructure (e.g., building sea walls and raising roads), utilizing the natural environment to protect assets and people (e.g., expanding coastal wetlands to absorb the impacts of sea level rise), building preparedness (e.g., ensuring supply chains will endure the changes), and capitalizing on new opportunities (e.g., sales of sustainable and resilient goods and services).

Climate Hazards

Hazards that can include (but are not limited to) extreme temperatures, drought, heavy rainfall, flooding, wildfires, coastal storms, etc.

Climate Risk

Refers to the potential negative impacts of climate change on an organization. This can include physical risks, which can be acute (e.g., extreme weather events like hurricanes, fires, and floods) or chronic (e.g., long-term changes and variability in precipitation, temperature, or sea-level).

Supply Chain Climate Risk

Expected climate or weather-related risks (e.g., extreme heat waves, tropical storms and hurricanes, wildfires, etc.) that can significantly impact the availability, cost, speed, responsiveness, and quality of a product or service’s manufacture, processing and distribution.

Climate-Related Financial Risk

Risks from climate change that could impact the financial stability of an organization and/or the greater financial system and economy. This includes risk related to the physical impacts of climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Resilience

The capacity and ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions.

Strategies

Decarbonization

Decarbonization is the process of reducing the amount of GHG emissions from design, construction activities, and building operations. In buildings, decarbonization and GHG mitigation actions include: energy efficiency, fuel switching, demand response, demand flexibility, renewables deployment/purchase, and refrigerant leaks prevention (e.g., HFC fugitive emissions). It also includes awareness of the embodied carbon of materials and exploring opportunities to sequester carbon through natural means in the soil and trees.

Grid-interactive Efficient Building (GEB)

GEB is an energy efficient building with smart technologies characterized by the active use of distributed energy resources (DERs) to optimize energy use for grid services, occupant needs and preferences, and cost reductions in a continuous and integrated way. GEB builds on the well-established discipline of energy efficiency by adding strategies and technologies to also manage peak demand and coordinate buildings’ electrical loads, taking into account peak usage hours, renewable generation, storage options, and resiliency needs as appropriate.

Renewable Electricity

As defined in 42 U.S.C. § 15852(b), renewable electricity is electric energy generated from solar, wind, biomass, landfill gas, ocean (including tidal, wave, current, and thermal), geothermal, municipal solid waste, or new hydroelectric generation capacity achieved from increased efficiency or additions of new capacity at an existing hydroelectric project. For hydroelectric, "new" means placed in service after Jan. 1, 1999, consistent with the definition of new hydroelectric generation capacity in section 2852 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 as amended by section 2842 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (10 U.S.C. § 2911(e)).

Carbon Pollution-free Electricity

A formal definition is expected to be forthcoming in the latter part of 2021 from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Embodied Carbon

Embodied Carbon refers to the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the mining, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, transportation, and installation of materials.

Tools

ESPC

Energy Savings Performance Contract - Authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, these contracts are a partnership between an agency and an energy services company that allow federal agencies to procure energy savings and facility improvements with little to no up-front capital costs or special appropriations from Congress. Energy services company improvements are paid over a contractual term as a share of the energy or water cost savings realized.

UESC

Utility Energy Service Contract opens in new window

- Authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, these contracts are a partnership between an agency and a utility that allows federal agencies to procure opens in new window

energy savings and facility improvements with little to no up-front capital costs or special appropriations from Congress. The utility is paid over a contractual term as a share of the energy or water cost savings realized.

NDER

National Deep Energy Retrofit - A GSA program using ESPCs to achieve significant energy reductions, with a goal of over 50%; it has doubled the average energy reduction for GSA compared to the government-wide average.

Resources

For further information, see the following federal government resources:

For information on federal government GHG emissions, see the Department of Energy's Federal Facility Reporting Requirements and Performance Data opens in new window and these datasets from the Comprehensive Annual Energy Data and Sustainability Performance report:

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