Transforming our Buildings has Enormous Potential for Climate Action
Climate change has hardly been out of the news in my first few weeks as Head of Environmental Sustainability for the CIOB. Last month was confirmed as the hottest September on record globally by a large margin, with 2023 looking set to be the hottest year, potentially the first to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures. We saw multiple extreme weather events, with a severe heatwave and bushfires in Australia, devastating floods in Libya, and torrential rainfall in Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. There is nothing like the wrath of mother nature to help focus your mind on a new role!
So, you would think action on global heating would be accelerating. Meantime, in the UK, there was a deliberate move from policymakers to slow the pace of change, with delays to the phasing out of fossil fuel boilers and the abolition of the Energy Efficiency Task Force signalling a worrying trend in the UK Government’s approach to decarbonisation. You may have seen the CIOB response to this scaling back of ambition, among the many voices from our industry appealing for continued leadership on net zero.
On the global stage at least, sustainability in the built environment will be at the forefront of the climate agenda at COP28, with the Multilevel Action, Urbanization, Built Environment and Transport Day on 6 December 2023 being a key one to watch.
I have also been heartened by what we are seeing from within the built environment industry, with numerous initiatives making strong progress and several new resources made available.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) launched the second edition of its Whole Life Carbon Assessment (WLCA) for the Built Environment standard in September, updated to be used globally and to cover all built assets and infrastructure projects throughout the built environment lifecycle.
Construction leaders joined forces to launch the new Built Environment Carbon Database, free-to-access and designed to become the main source of carbon estimating and benchmarking for the UK construction sector. A practical instrument to support the decarbonisation of the built environment. Great to see CIOB among the organisations steering this.
The UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard, currently in development, will incorporate the RICS WLCA methodology to assess upfront, embodied, operational, user and whole-life carbon. This important initiative has seen impressive collaboration across the built environment including BRE, the Carbon Trust, many of the major industry and professional bodies and a number of construction firms. A recent technical consultation attracted over 500 responses, demonstrating the level of engagement with the initiative. Our own members will have the opportunity to learn more about the standard and provide input at a free online engagement event on 6 December.
The CIOB also launched the comprehensive new Guide to Sustainability in the Built Environment which we hope will become essential reading for construction professionals as they work to make their difference to this defining challenge and put sustainability at the heart of everything they do.
We know that transforming our buildings has enormous potential for climate action and that without strong action, construction activities will further exacerbate environmental damage. So it is extremely encouraging to see the industry collaborating strongly to accelerate work in this area. Far from slowing the pace of change, we must be ambitious and find ways to do more good, not only less harm. Ultimately this means shifting our thinking from how we can achieve net zero to understanding what climate positive could look like for the built environment.