Emergency declared

Perhaps 2019 will become known as the year of the climate emergency, when the voice of the environment truly reached the ears of governments (with the dishonourable exception of the US President, of course). Climate change has rarely been out of the news or far from the lips of administrators.

It might be stretching a point and somewhat glib to credit the seemingly sudden declaration of a climate emergency to the activities of a certain Swedish teenager or environmental protesters engaged in civil disobedience.

More likely that the repeated warnings from scientists and physical evidence down the years have finally created the tipping point whereby the need to take action has gone from being a decision of conscience to becoming a decision of economics.

Even the financiers are wading in. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, said recently that companies and industries that don’t adapt to the transition to a zero-carbon world will be punished by investors and go bankrupt.

Equally though, Carney made the point that, “There will be industries, sectors and firms that do very well during this process because they will be part of the solution. A number of the industrial solutions draw on the strength of UK innovation, from the use of AI… to potentially advanced materials.”

And this is the challenge. Meeting the UK’s legal obligation to be zero carbon by 2050 provides huge opportunity for industry to innovate. For the built environment and construction, responsible for a significant chunk of CO2 emissions, the net-zero target also needs a huge shift in behaviour.

One would expect engineers to be at the forefront of such a challenge. Happily, it seems that there are many like-minded construction engineering firms and universities that have ‘grasped the nettle’. A number of independent websites were established during the summer, as a global petition and manifesto of a commitment to reduce the impact of construction/built environment on the planet. The ‘Construction Declares’ movement unites all strands of the sector in declaring a climate and biodiversity emergency.

From this hub, www.structuralengineers declare.com, www.civilengineersdeclare.com and www.buildingservicesengineersdeclare.com have attracted signatories from organisations both large and small.

The commitments vary slightly between each discipline but there are broad similarities, including: raise awareness of emergency among clients and supply chain; share knowledge and research on an open-source basis; accelerate the shift to low-embodied-carbon materials; minimise wasteful use of resources in design; collaborate with clients, architects, engineers and contractors to further reduce construction waste; take account of life-cycle costing, whole-life carbon modelling and post-occupancy evaluation as part of the basic scope of work; and upgrade existing buildings for extended use as a more carbon-efficient alternative to demolition and new build whenever there is a viable choice.

The declaration is available for any organisation to sign and well over 100 structural engineering firms have already made the commitment. So the initiative is a useful starting point. Encouragement, engagement, communication and co-operation will be the next steps.

In declaring a climate emergency, the emphasis now is on action, not words. There should be no more need for separate sustainability aspects within design and engineering; such practice must be commonplace and the very starting point for the built environment.

Taken from Concrete November 2019. Visit: www.concrete.org.uk / https://bit.ly/2cjmEiM