Cutting carbon: The long and winding road

One of the principal recommendations of the initial report of the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team established by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills was that “we need a plan”. Almost two years on, the Green Construction Board that was established subsequent to the IGT, launched its routemap - the beginnings of that plan - at Ecobuild this week.

It has been no surprise that its development has proved to be complex. There can be no single route by which we will work carbon out of our system, so any attempt to chart a simple path through the problem will soon fall to obsolescence. The work done by Arup as consultants for this work therefore has three elements, designed to produce a dynamic document.

There can be no single route by which we will work carbon out of our system, so any attempt to chart a simple path through the problem will soon fall to obsolescence

It starts where it must: with a look at where carbon, both operational and embodied, currently resides in the built environment. If we don’t know that, then we certainly can’t lay plans for getting rid of it.

Instead, tracing carbon by type of asset, system by system, provides the basis for setting priorities, for both government and industry, to initiate research, make plans, bring forward innovative ideas, develop supply chains and look at the potential for new markets. The transition to low carbon must not be about sacrifice, but opportunity and growth.

The second element of the work is a timed framework that looks at where and when plans need to be made if we are going to hit not just the overall 2050 target of an 80% reduction in emissions, but also the interim milestones. These are critical in highlighting the need for action now, rather than allowing us to assume that we can leave it to the next generation to come up with some technical miracle long after most of us have retired to our vineyards in the north.

The final piece of the package is a calculator. Loaded with the data about where the carbon is, this provides the basis for calculating the carbon reduction that would be netted by implementing measures that improve the performance of different asset types and systems. It also enables users to make assumptions about a whole series of factors that will influence the answer, and this too aids the setting of priorities.

Clearly, in the combinations of the choice of measures to be applied and assumptions to be made, there is an infinite number of pathways to 2050. For the purposes of illustration, however, Arup has run three scenarios. The first plots the trajectory necessary to achieve the 2050 target - which clearly requires the assumption that everything that can be done will be done, and at a quality that virtually eliminates any performance gap. I believe, however, that this also requires a level of optimism that does not recognise the scale of the challenge, and that it therefore risks a loss of credibility that threatens the whole enterprise.

At the other extreme, the second scenario assumes an approach that is closer to “business as usual”. This suggests that the carbon reduction achieved by 2050 will be 52%, and so it threatens the enterprise for a different reason: that we will fall hopelessly short of the target.

We must not assume that we can leave it to the next generation to come up with some technical miracle long after most of us have retired to our vineyards in the North

The third scenario is therefore an inevitably subjective attempt to show a middle way. With the assumptions made in the Arup report, this nets a carbon reduction of, say, 64%, so ramping this up calls for all the skills of the industry, supported by the government.

So what now?

First, the report needs to be considered for adoption by the Green Construction Board. In parallel we hope that people will access the routemap material as work in progress and start to test it and comment on it. More detailed plans then need to be made, laid over a realistic timescale, for the research, development and implementation of measures designed to eliminate carbon wherever it might be found.

This will call for relevant constituencies within the industry to take ownership of every ton of carbon, without which there can be no meaningful plan. It will require innovative thinking both in the development of cost-effective measures and in the making of plans - plans which, by the way, only the industry has the capability to design. It will require a combination of education, the creation of customer appeal and incentivisation (social, financial or regulatory) to encourage take-up by a customer base with other things on its mind. Above all it will call for leadership, both within the industry and on the part of the government, and there is no better place for that to be demonstrated than in the work of the Green Construction Board.

Gradually, over time (and we should use the time we’ve got, but we should also start now), this kind of collaborative effort will build the routemap to create something that balances aspiration with realism; with our thoughts on the horizon, our eyes on the road immediately ahead, and our feet on the ground. Join the journey at www.greenconstructionboard.org/routemap.

Paul Morrell is chair of the Green Construction Board routemap working group