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How is the UK's infrastructure industry getting on at meeting the net zero challenge? 
A thread on yesterday's announcements about targets and new reports from Green Construction Board, @SkanskaUKplc etc #NetZeroInfrastructure
A thread on yesterday's announcements about targets and new reports from Green Construction Board, @SkanskaUKplc etc #NetZeroInfrastructure
This week Boris Johnson announced the intention to implement @theCCCuk's recommendations for the 6th Carbon Budget - committing us to delivering a 78% reduction in GHG emissions by 2035 (compared with 1990 territorial levels)
As per this thread from @ChiefExecCCC - the focus now moves to delivery https://twitter.com/ChiefExecCCC/status/1384484119099412480
Infrastructure (and the industry that delivers it) is critical to achieving our carbon targets - directly accounting for ~100 MtCO2e/yr and influencing another ~320 MtCO2e/yr - about half of the UK's total carbon footprint.
The recent numerical update we prepared for @ICE_engineers against the 2013 Infrastructure Carbon Review's industry-wide baseline showed a mixed picture of progress. https://www.ice.org.uk/news-and-insight/latest-ice-news/carbon-reduction-falling-short-of-net-zero-target
Whilst the energy and waste sectors have taken massive strides over the past decade, other sectors like transport have much more to do
Yesterday saw the launch of the Green Construction Board's official ICR 7 years on progress report - appropriately titled 'Good progress but not fast enough'. It's a cracking summary of where the industry is at and includes many sensible recommendations. https://www.constructionleadershipcouncil.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Infrastructure-Carbon-Review-seven-years-on_March-2021.pdf
Within the report there is a recurring theme about the need for projects to align to a wider strategy that links them to an overarching national decarbonisation plan (a few example excerpts)
Yesterday also saw the launch of a new report from the Net Zero Infrastructure Industry Coalition's Embodied Carbon Working Group #NZIIC #ActOnCarbon - https://www.skanska.co.uk/about-skanska/media/features/new-infrastructure-coalition-report-calls-for-urgent-action-on-carbon-measurement-to-achieve-net-zero-by-2050/
The #NZIIC report attempted to quantify the capital carbon associated with planned projects in the National Infrastructure Pipeline - asking whether our carbon wallet was already empty?
The report team attempted to gather carbon data or estimates for all the projects in the last full version of the national pipeline to try and form a collective estimate of committed carbon we could compare with our targets
Crucially, despite extensive data gathering and cross industry engagement, the report showed that we essentially have no idea how much carbon we're already committed to with our present infrastructure plans
For many types of infrastructure projects the data simply isn't available - and for others, where it is being collected, the range of carbon intensities is really wide preventing any simple extrapolation to fill in the gaps
So how can we hope to meet our targets when we don't know the combined impact of our spending plans? Whose job is it to check that our project plans collectively add up to a net zero future? And who might start gathering the data to do this in future?
Could this be regulators through an expanded environmental remit or the new national infrastructure integrator proposed by the GCB report authors?
Ultimately we need a shared sector carbon budget and common trajectories from which individual companies and projects can derive their targets. The current nascent Science Based Targets process isn't enough - see separate https://twitter.com/jannikgiesekam/status/1357354524042801157
https://twitter.com/jannikgiesekam/status/1357354524042801157
In the absence of a robust process for ensuring consistency with carbon budgets we're going to see a lot more challenges of the sort faced by M4, Heathrow/ANPS, RIS2, HS2 etc - http://www.jannikgiesekam.co.uk/research/presentations/Jannik_Giesekam_presentation_251120.pdf
Could ongoing cross industry projects like the @UKGBC's new net zero whole life carbon roadmap for the built environment be the first step in closing this gap? Let's see... https://www.ukgbc.org/ukgbc-work/net-zero-whole-life-carbon-roadmap/
