London needs a ‘route map’ to zero carbon

DOWNLOAD ZERO CARBON LONDON

Consultant Editor

London needs a ‘route map’ to zero carbon

81 Newgate Street © KPF, featured in Zero Carbon London

London and the rest of the UK needs a ‘route map’, more retrofitting and a collective effort from the built environment industry to get to net zero. But it must also continue to make the point that sustainability makes good business sense.

So said UK Green Building Council chairman Sunand Prasad this week at a webinar from NLA to launch its new Zero Carbon London report, which found that 85% of respondents to a survey believed that current policy and regulations are not fit for purpose to get to net zero.

‘If the industry spoke with a more united voice, we would definitely get much further on this’, said former RIBA president Prasad, noting that most of the respondents were consultants, many of whom have become less powerful in the debate. How could we get more contractors and specialist subcontractors involved, he asked. ‘In a way, part of the answer is in our hands’.

Prasad said there needed to be a ‘route map’ and collective path to a zero carbon future, avoiding the problem of ‘the best becoming the enemy of the good’ but aiming to attend to as many of the issues highlighted in the NLA report as possible. Carbon literacy is another issue, he said, suggesting that the public need to be able to talk of energy issues as well as they can about house prices ‘with complete expertise’.

Zero Carbon London survey preview

NLA’s Barbara Chesi had earlier run through some of the report’s key findings, which included views from roundtables and meetings and a survey of 178 responses from 105 different organisations. Just 2% of those sruveyed believed that the UK is on track to meet the climate agenda, that figure only rising to 3% for London. The policy framework and regulations were viewed as the biggest barrier, with other factors including the lack of green finance. Those surveyed suggest that retrofitting should become 90% of the work of built environment professionals and a truly circular economy approach be adopted to construction, design and planning.

Juliette Morgan, head of sustainable development at British Land said there was a great potential for more building in timber but again there was an industry opportunity around cooperation on basic things like burn rate, while there is further ‘massive’ potential for the circular economy within refurbishment. Waterman Group’s Charlie Scott suggested that we should move away from complicating MEP systems and putting tec into buildings that will have the risk of obsolescence and lots of embodies carbon in maintenance. The lockdown months of March, April and May were ‘a real window into what cities could be’, said Enfield’s Sarah Cary, pointing to the potential for London’s green infrastructure preventing people from moving to the country. But Elementa’s Nathan Millar said an encouraging sign was the way that industry and organisations like LETI had mobilised together without being precious about knowledge sharing on zero carbon matters. ‘What I find really refreshing is the collaborative approach’, he said.

Real innovation is happening in product manufacture, added Prasad, but breaking down those siloes and connecting is still important, along with avoiding ‘tunnel vision’, ‘echo chambers and confirmation biases’ across the industry.

This is especially so if the message can be underpinned by one of UKGBC’s key findings. ‘We made the business case for sustainability’, said Prasad. ‘That’s something the industry can unite on’

Download the full report at https://nla.london/insights/zero-carbon-london

DOWNLOAD ZERO CARBON LONDON

David Taylor

Consultant Editor

Programme Champions