Published: 26th July 2023
Construction sector must keep bearing down on emissions… whether government comes with us or not.
By Rob Gill, Managing Director, Green Box Thinking
Unless you’ve taken a holiday on Jupiter in recent days, you’ll probably be aware that His Majesty’s Government has been taking a bit of a kicking over its environmental record.
The gist of these criticisms is that green issues have slid down the administration’s agenda since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister last October.
But even if these allegations of backsliding hold water, there remains a massive onus on construction professionals, such as developers and investors, to ensure their buildings emit as little carbon as possible and offset any unavoidable discharges by buying credits.
Here’s the story.
The critics
Among the many groups and individuals to have publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the government in recent days are:
Friends of COP
This group of 15 prominent experts was established by Boris Johnson’s government to support COP26, the United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow during November 2021. The members wrote to Mr Sunak last week, expressing their “deep concern for your government’s lackadaisical approach to international climate, nature and environment issues.”
The group’s letter expressed alarm at reports that the government was wavering over its commitment to invest £11.6bn in tackling climate change overseas.
Signatories said: “It is no longer adequate to say the £11.6 bn will be delivered, given the recent evidence that delivery is technically impossible on the current trajectory.”
The group warned the Prime Minister that the UK was losing its place on the global stage when it came to climate change. They said the country was risking missing vital opportunities, internationally and domestically, to tackle and benefit economically from efforts to halt global warming.
Its letter said: “At a time of multiple and interrelated global crises and growing distrust between the global north and south, it seems, inconceivably, that the UK’s interest in the world beyond its borders has narrowed.”
The group also urged the prime minister to attend the next United Nations climate conference, COP 28, in the United Arab Emirates this November, and asked the government to “remain resolute” in its other climate commitments.
Overall, Friends of COP said, the government needed to “recapture” the “spirit of leadership” its predecessor showed when the UK was hosting COP 26.
Friends of COP members include Lord Nicholas Stern, author of a groundbreaking 2006 government report on the economics of climate change; Professor Emily Shuckburgh, a University of Cambridge climate scientist; Paul Polman, the former chief executive of Unilever; Sir Peter Bruce, a leading chemist; and Kate Hampton, chief executive of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.
Observers of international climate negotiations
Close watchers of international climate negotiations were reported in The Times last week to be pointing out that the UK appears to have stopped publicly supporting the High Ambition Coalition. This is an alliance of countries backing strong action on reducing carbon emissions.
The experts said that while the UK had signed numerous past statements from the coalition, it had not endorsed the three most recent ones. These were: an open letter in May to the G7 group of major liberal democracies ahead of its leaders’ summit; a call in July to end the fossil fuel era and move towards a clean energy world; and an open letter, also this month, to the G20 group of developed and emerging economies about safeguarding our liveable future.
The Climate Change Committee
Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, a group of independent government advisers, told the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee last week that the UK’s lack of progress towards its legally binding goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 was raising “a red flag”. He said a dearth of ministerial initiative meant the country was making “worryingly slow” headway and had “seemed to backtrack” on commitments about fossil fuels, after a being an early leader.
Referring to the last year, Mr Stark said: “We only saw real lacklustre support for the climate objectives over that period.”
Leading UK businesses
Over 100 leading British businesses wrote publicly to Mr Sunak this month, urging him to refocus on the UK’s net zero goal, after reportedly becoming frustrated at their private communications with government achieving little.
The signatories included Tesco, BT, British Gas owner Centrica, Unilever, Amazon and Marks & Spencer. They also featured energy companies EDF and SSE, chemical group BASF, cement maker Cemex and Phoenix Group, the UK’s biggest savings and retirement business.
As some of the UK’s largest enterprises, the companies said they saw the 2050 net zero goal as a “massive economic opportunity.”
They wrote: “We plan to invest billions into the low-carbon economy, because we know it is crucial for our future prosperity and because we know it is the right thing to do for the future of our planet.”
But the businesses warned that Britain risked missing out on investment at a time when the EU and the US had produced stronger decarbonisation plans.
The letter said: “This is the economic opportunity of the 21st century and we are concerned that without a renewed focus and commitment to delivery from the government, the UK will be left behind. We are ready to invest, but we need your leadership and commitment to the green economy – now, more than ever.”
Lord Goldsmith
Zac Goldsmith stepped down as international climate minister at the Foreign Office last month, saying, in his resignation letter to Mr Sunak, that “our efforts on a wide range of domestic environmental issues have simply ground to a standstill.”
Lord Goldsmith added: “The UK has visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature. Too often we are simply absent from key international fora. Only last week, you seemingly chose to attend the party of a media baron rather than attend a critically important environment summit in Paris that ordinarily the UK would have co-led.”
The former minister echoed the concerns of the Friends of COP over the Government’s commitment to invest £11.6bn in tackling climate change overseas, adding that the UK had effectively abandoned that “widely reported and solemn” promise. He said this was a pledge that had been consistently repeated by prime ministers in the past four years, including the present one.
Lord Goldsmith concluded: “Having been able to get so much done previously, I have struggled even to hold the line in recent months. The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you…are simply uninterested.
“That signal, or lack of it, has trickled down through Whitehall and caused a kind of paralysis. I will never understand how, with all the knowledge we now have…anyone can be uninterested.”
The background
These recent criticisms reflected events including:
- The government granting the go-ahead last December for a new deep shaft coking coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, whose output would mainly supply the steel industry.
- Regulators apparently being poised to approve the pumping of oil and gas from the vast new Rosebank field, 80 miles west of the Shetland Islands in the north Atlantic. It’s estimated this will increase global carbon emissions by 200m tonnes a year, more than the total produced by the world’s 28 poorest countries combined.
- Ministers appearing to have kicked any loosening of the planning system for onshore wind farms into the long grass. Only one wind turbine has been completed in England so far this year, built by a community group on the outskirts of Bristol. Although one more is under construction, many experts see such slow progress as imperilling the government’s target of having a zero-carbon electricity grid in place by 2035.
One defence
Some Conservatives have responded to these criticisms by claiming that their party’s largely unexpected win in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, in west London, last week, showed the danger of trying to move too far ahead of public opinion on environmental issues.
This was because the result was widely attributed to the plan of Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan to triple the size of the capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) from 29 August, including extending it to this constituency. The zone currently covers only the inner city.
That scheme levies a daily charge of £12.50 on vehicles that don’t meet emission standards, including diesel cars over eight years old and petrol ones built before 2005. The zone’s expansion would therefore compel some drivers in previously unaffected areas to replace existing vehicles with new ones, potentially at significant net expense, during a cost-of-living crisis, or see their outgoings rise by up to about £4,500 per vehicle a year.
However, supporters of the scheme point out that since the introduction of ULEZ in 2017, by Boris Johnson, when he was London mayor, emissions of nitrogen dioxide from traffic in the existing zone have fallen by almost 50 per cent, to quote just one benefit. Exposure to nitrogen dioxide can substantially damage human respiratory tracts and increase people’s vulnerability to conditions such as severe respiratory infections, chronic lung disease and asthma.
ULEZ advocates also pointed out that, despite the imminent extension of the scheme to Uxbridge and South Ruislip, there was an almost seven-point swing to Labour at the by-election, which saw the Conservatives’ majority tumble from over 7,000 to less than 500 votes. These facts, they said, hardly indicated a local population seething about the forthcoming change.
Where we stand
We’d obviously love to see climate change right at the top of the government’s priorities, because in our view that’s where the issue belongs…dogs bark, cats meow and Green Box Thinking wants everyone to protect the environment.
But even if the subject has slipped down the government’s list of concerns – and we make no judgement on that – this in no way absolves construction professionals, such as developers and investors, from ensuring their own buildings emit as little carbon as possible.
They can achieve this through measures such as being selective over their choice of building materials and managing on-site operations carefully during construction processes, as well as refurbishing and retrofitting existing developments with more environmentally friendly materials. They can also, of course, buy carbon credits, to offset any emissions which cannot be eradicated by other means.
Indeed, if the government is going to be less helpful in the quest for net zero carbon the future, it’s even more important that our industry delivers the goods in such ways on an incremental basis, for the sake of future generations and the planet.
The construction industry can make a massive contribution to carbon emission reduction at the level of individual developments and buildings, so in that sense recent criticism of the government’s record changes nothing.
It’s probably worth reminding ourselves why we still need to proceed quickly with this vital quest.
The present position
The built environment supplies almost 40 per cent of all worldwide carbon emissions - making it easily the biggest single source of them - through a combination of embodied and operational emissions.
Embodied emissions are those locked-in during the construction process and comprise about 11 per cent of global outflows. These are largely due to the use of carbon-producing materials like cement, steel, aluminium and plastics. The building industry buys almost all the cement, about half the steel, plus around a quarter of the aluminium and plastics the world produces.
Operational emissions are those generated during developments’ day-to-day running, by features such as their heating, lighting and air conditioning systems. These account for around 28 per cent of worldwide carbon discharges.
A separate UK study has found the built environment currently contributes about 25 per cent of all domestic carbon emissions. Around 19 per cent of total outflows come from buildings in operation, with six per cent being embodied.
Not only are overall carbon emissions from buildings (both worldwide and domestically) growing, but current trajectories suggest they’ll double by 2050. Ironically, that’s the year by which the UK is legally bound to have achieved net zero carbon overall.
Emission figures for 2020 showed a decline in construction emissions. However, that was mostly due to Covid-19 related lockdowns, which also produced drops in emissions from many other sectors. Don’t be misled by these figures, as efforts by the building industry to reduce its emissions were shown to have had a limited impact on this decline.
How we got here
The construction sector has found itself in its current carbon position due to a variety of factors.
One is the industry has concentrated mainly on operational emissions, by making buildings more energy efficient. It has therefore historically not put enough focus on dealing with embodied carbon.
A second is the sector has traditionally adopted a carbon-intensive approach of demolition, followed by construction of a new building. That’s been partly due to refurbishment costs often exceeding a development’s value.
Another explanation is that until March 2022 most new UK buildings were exempt from VAT, while the bulk of refurbishments and repairs attracted the tax at a rate of 20 per cent.
It’s worth noting that long-standing labour shortages in construction, including of people skilled in building sustainably, have been an obstacle to improving the sector’s carbon record too. This problem has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and, arguably, the ending of free movement of workers from the EU following Brexit.
Although we’ve focused in this section on carbon emissions – Green Box Thinking’s specialist subject – it’s worth noting in passing that there are other sustainability areas where the building industry’s record also needs to improve dramatically. For example, construction, demolition and excavation now generate two-thirds of all the waste the UK produces and impacts significantly in the areas of water, noise, air pollution and biodiversity.
Before you fall into despair however, there are some reasons for optimism, albeit limited ones. Certain enlightened manufacturers are developing low or no carbon substitutes for concrete, such as Hempcrete – formed by wet-mixing hemp shiv with a lime binder – or reducing its impact, through increased recycled aggregate content, for example. Also, modern methods of construction, (e.g. modular building), which involve components being assembled in factories before being moved on-site, ensuring repeatability and helping to reduce waste, are gaining ground.