I arrive at Kensington Olympia on a wet and grey London morning, fighting with a nearly inside out umbrella that seems increasingly intent on dragging me into the venue. The rain hasn’t kept people away as I walk in to an already buzzing venue; the doors only officially opened 10 minutes ago.
I head straight to the sustainability stage – which is unsurprisingly the most central and what looks like the largest stage on the floorplan – for the opening panel about creating a ‘higher performing, healthier, lower carbon-built environment.’
While there are of course a multitude of challenges (and indeed opportunities) facing the construction sector right now, it would be remiss of me to ignore the one on everyone’s lips: the climate crisis. I’m choosing to focus on to topic of creating a sustainable built environment in this blog because a) it was the most consistently packed stage throughout the exhibition and b) selfishly, it’s an area of significant interest to myself.
Out of the three separate seminars I sat in on at the sustainability stages, I wanted to share some of my key learnings from the day, from the people that know best – architects, contractors, developers and clients:
- On reducing embodied carbon – lots of embodied carbon can actually be designed out, but the maximum opportunities come at the briefing stage and reduce significantly as the project progresses. A loud and clear message to all involved – early-stage intervention is key if we want to meet carbon targets.
- Scope 3 – one of the harder measures to control as it’s outside of our own businesses, yet it’s predicted that anything between 80-99% of emissions come via scope 3. Some panellists stated it can be a challenge to get the right data from suppliers, but it’s what the sector should be striving for to make gains in this area.
- Collaboration – while the construction sector has traditionally been relatively closed off and competitive, it’s only going to able to make real sustainability gains if all areas of the supply chain work together. More sharing of information, even when things have gone wrong, for example. The key message here felt like ‘let’s drop our egos and be more transparent’.
- Greenwashing is becoming more common – so science-based targets are a must; more of these please, industry!
- “If we want to create a sustainable built environment we need to think about a circle” – of course, the panel moderator was talking about a circular economy. Another way of reducing greenwashing and proving, not just saying.
- Looking outside of just the building is crucial – just as an example, one of the architect panellists told us that most offices require far more emissions to get to than the actual buildings use, which poses the question: can a building be truly sustainable if it requires everyone to drive to it? Touché.
- Retrofitting holds lots of potential in helping the UK reach its net zero targets. In fact, 80% of buildings that will make up our estate in 2050 have already been built. But there’s a long way to go – 2 million non-residential properties need retrofitting by 2050, whilst 1 million a year for another 30 YEARS need retrofitting in the residential sector. Yikes.
- But the challenges around retrofitting? A few…from convincing the client to go with an old over a newer building in the first place, to the VAT retrofit projects are subject to, to a lack of funding and understanding of what can be achieved through retrofit.
- A ‘fabric first’ was widely held as the most sensible approach by many – but questions here were around how to make existing building fabrics more efficient. A solution for better solid wall insulation was discussed as paramount.
- Passivhaus: a favourite with architects but something that’s still not been adapted into the mainstream. Why? Not lots of people are qualified in this approach and there are few UK contractors that can actually build to Passivhaus standards. Also, cost: the industry needs to make this type of build affordable en masse, and there’s still a long way to go in this regard.
Lots of interesting discussions indeed – I certainly got on the train back to Manchester full of ideas and hopeful for the future of the sector. There are differing opinions on the value of exhibitions, but from a learnings perspective if nothing else, I’ll be back next year.