I attended an online event yesterday for the launch of a new standard to achieve net zero carbon emissions from existing and new UK buildings as soon as practicably possible (https://www.nzcbuildings.co.uk/). The bigger objective is to reduce the human impact on global warming, commonly associated with minimising greenhouse gases.
It is a hugely ambitious goal and so will take incredible commitment to reach.
Service businesses have a much easier route to achieving the bigger goal by simply making existing physical assets and human resources work more ‘greenly’.
By contrast, organisations involved in constructing new buildings or retrofitting old buildings consume large amounts of natural materials, employing precious energy reserves to form them into the key components of these buildings. Dismantling an existing building to make way for a brand new replacement appears hugely wasteful, compared at least to re-using the original materials. This ignores the connected issue of operating the finished buildings more efficiently.
One way to make gains relatively quickly would be to completely rethink the use of carbon-intensive reinforced concrete in buildings, either by minimising it, or avoiding it completely, or by at least choosing ‘greener’ systems if it has to be employed (I blogged about this under Building #27). Of course, such an approach has to be balanced against the longevity of the built structures - the sooner they deteriorate, the sooner a retrofit or replacement is needed, and so the cycle continues.
Therefore the key barrier to progress in this area comes from those who either don’t want to know about or, worse, don’t care about the negative impact of the construction industry on the environment. Apart from financial incentives to nudge such behaviour in the shorter term, we need to continue with lifelong education and training that explains the reasoning to everyone in terms they can fully understand and commit to.