|
Buildings need greater attention after they are built, ACE’s annual conference has heard.
Alex Tosetti of URS Scott Wilson chaired the event and warned that correcting climate change now will cost around one percent of world GDP, while ignoring it will cost around 20 percent.
With that in mind Mr Tosetti noted that efforts were underway, with the government announcing their carbon floor price. Yet he warned that a big part of the problem and the solution is buildings.
So he noted that engineers have a fantastic opportunity to rekindle perceptions of the valuable, if not always valued, career of the engineer.
Paul Morrell OBE, the government’s chief construction advisor, stressed that the low carbon agenda was not diminished by the budget deficit.
He said that the deficit was a priority for good reason. It would, on Treasury projections, take until the 2030s to get national debt back down to 40% of GDP. However, he stressed this could not and did not mean the environment mattered less.
He said there was a ticking time bomb in climate change. The government planned to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, but as yet did not know how that could be done.
That, Mr Morrell explained, was a tough thing for government to do. And the plan for decarbonising thus has a lot to live up to.
In regards to work streams, he said infrastructure plans had to reflect that carbon emitted by building it was outweighed by years of carbon that its use would result in. So he suggested that had to be better recognised in future.
Meanwhile, he said failing to think about whole life carbon emission was crucial to avoid bad decisions. Knocking down a building to replace it with a low carbon building was not smart, nor would be installing photovoltaic cells if they required more energy to manufacture than they could produce.
So he suggested upgrading homes as and when they were sold. With homes sold on average every seven years, this would be an effective way to reduce carbon use.
Bill Bordass of the Useable Buildings Trust warned that there was a state of denial about building performance. He said that buildings were not like cars coming off a production line. They need managing long term.
So he emphasised that too often predictions for a new building’s energy use would, once it was build, turn out to be outstripped by real energy use by 2.5 times.
Part of the reason for this, he said, was that buildings were often too complex and that design intent is rarely well communicated to users.
Bill Bordass suggested that the solution to these problems was about setting realistic ambitions and following through. People could be made better aware of what they have got and performance can be monitored once the building is in use.
Hannah Collie of the Construction Industry Council then said there was a lack of awareness at a young age of what engineers do and what they can offer as a career.
There was, she said, also a lack of prospective leaders for the industry. So CIC went out to young engineers and formed a group to look at the period of 2020 to 2050.
This group has been able to look at how skills needs will be met in the industry in the years to come. Likewise she said it wants to see a joined up approach and agenda, though no group member felt the industry was in that position as yet, or was set on the right course.
Asked about how best to win clients around to low carbon solutions, Paul Morrell said the commitment to a stable carbon price floor would help. Clients would gradually see its price grow to ensure its externalities are reflected in price and clients can act on financial instincts to reduce carbon.
Bill Bordass added a warning that carbon’s externalities are huge and as such we need to use professionalism to press low carbon solutions more effectively as the market alone would respond too late.
|