Keeping sustainable construction on the agenda

We live in interesting times. And that feels like an understatement!

Almost concurrently we watch as President Trump announces the USA’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement yet record CO₂e emissions are reported for 2024 and the highest ever average temperature is reached in the same year. This wouldn’t be so bad but for the fact that the top 10 highest temperature records have all occurred in the last 10 years.

This is no coincidence, as growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing pollution and biodiversity loss increase the risk of exceeding critical thresholds that, when crossed, lead to large, accelerating and often irreversible changes in the climate system. This also increase the risk that we will witness horrific and accelerating chain reactions, where one climate change impact triggers another, creating a cascading series of increasingly severe consequences. 

The Built Environment’s responsibility

Unfortunately, construction and the built environment holds some considerable culpability for this.

After all, the Built Environment is responsible for:

• Generating approximately 40% of global carbon emissions, with 11% arising from construction projects
• Using roughly half of the raw materials extracted
• Creating around a third of the world’s overall waste
• Second largest driver of man-made pressure on biodiversity

Practising sustainable construction methods

But this cannot be our future. We must stop being part of the problem and transition to being part of the solution. We can build more sustainable buildings, with lower embodied carbon that only require renewable energy in operation. We can avoid waste and create genuine biodiversity gain.

We can retrofit our existing buildings and ensure our infrastructure is adaptable and resilient to the changes that are now “baked in”.

After all we know that we must avoid creating stranded assets and instead align our offering to delivering the premium value buildings that boast BREEAM Outstanding and LEED Platinum credits. This makes good economic sense, and with careful delivery, this can align with all the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which is CIOB President, Professor Mike Kagioglou‘s key theme for his Presidential year.

CIOB Sustainability Award

In a time of crisis, we need strong and responsible leadership more than ever.

For our sector, the CIOB’s Sustainability Award recognises the person that has done most to address this critical issue. As a previous winner of this medal and as a future President of CIOB, I am perhaps blessed with a unique view on the importance of this issue.

The Sustainability Award recognises those people that are doing the right thing. The short-list reminds us of the talented and dedicated individuals that are at the forefront of this movement. I commend them all and look forward to seeing ever more determined progress in putting sustainability at the heart of everything we build.

In a time of global crisis, this has never been more important.