This publication was prepared by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director, as part of the OECD programme on Decarbonising Buildings in Cities and Regions in the Programme of Work and Budget of the Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC) and as a contribution to the OECD 2021-22 Horizontal Project on Housing. The programme was championed and supported financially by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of Japan and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of the Netherlands.
The programme and underlying policy dialogues were managed by Atsuhito Oshima, Senior Policy Analyst, under the supervision of Aziza Akhmouch, Head of the Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development Division, in the CFE. Baku Kawai conducted background research and contributed to the initial design of the programme. The report was drafted by Atsuhito Oshima, with input from Baku Kawai, Ji-Soo Yoon, Jonathan Crook and Keisuke Takamatsu from the OECD Secretariat, CFE. Special thanks are due to Tadashi Matsumoto in the CFE, for his extensive advice on the design and implementation of the programme.
The report builds on the results of the OECD Survey on Decarbonising Buildings in Cities and Regions, which was conducted in co-operation with the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) from July to October 2021. Special thanks are due to the 21 cities and regions (see Box 1.2) for their responses to the questionnaire and feedback throughout the project. The authors also thank CoR for its co-operation in conducting and disseminating the survey, in particular Alessandra Antonini (CoR) and Jean Tanti (CoR), as well as the European Covenant of Mayors and Energy Cities.
The report benefited from experts’ insights at a policy seminar, Unleashing the Potential of Public Policies for Building Decarbonisation, held on 9-10 December 2021, and a webinar, Decarbonising Buildings in Cities and Regions, held on 14 December 2020. Special thanks are due to the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of the Netherlands, which co-organised the policy seminar, in particular, to Ferdi Licher, Joram Snijders and Bente Vedder, as well as to the speakers, Paula Rey Garcia (European Commission), Sara De Pablos (Council of Europe Development Bank), Zachary May (Province of British Columbia, Canada), Jérôme Bilodeau, Katie Hicks and Jamie Hulan (Natural Resources Canada), Matti Kuittinen (Ministry of the Environment, Finland), Yves-Laurent Sapoval (Ministry of Ecological and Inclusive Transition – Ministry of Territorial Cohesion and Relations with Local Authorities, France), Eva Kasparek (Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community, Germany), Takashi Imamura, Harunobu Murakami and Yoshihiro Murakami (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Japan), Jurgen de Jong (Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, the Netherlands), and Michael Blanford and B. Aaron Weaver (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).
Furthermore, thanks are extended to all the stakeholders who provided comments on the draft version of the report, in particular, Ksenia Petrichenko (International Energy Agency), Duncan Gibb (REN21), Yannick Trottier (City of Toronto) and delegates of the Working Party on Urban Policy, as well as to several OECD colleagues, including Boris Cournède, John Dulac, Sean Dougherty, Andrés Fuentes Hutfilter, Alexandre Banquet, Claire Hoffmann and Stephan Raes.
An earlier version of the report was discussed at the 30th session of the OECD Working Party on Urban Policy on 23 November 2021, under the reference [CFE/RDPC/URB(2021)22]. The final report was submitted for approval by written procedure to the Working Party on Urban Policy of the RDPC on 11 February 2022 under the reference [CFE/RDPC/URB(2021)22/REV1]. The publication process was led by Pilar Philip, and the final version of the report was edited and formatted by Victoria Elliott and Eleonore Morena.