Decarbonizing Construction Makes Huge Green Impact

California Buildings • Q3 2022

There are many pieces in the news about the perils and promises of remote working. Sometimes they seem interchangeable. The same is true for predicting the demise of the commercial building sector, or its new dawn. Regardless of the volatility of the market, one thing is true. The post-pandemic construction sector is absolutely essential in our collective hope to meet the greatest challenge of our time: climate change.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) caught all but the most savvy political insiders by surprise. For climate advocates, it’s mostly good news, unless you are stringent environmental justice fan nervous about some of the concessions to the fossil fuel industry. Regardless of how optimistic it makes you feel, it predominantly focused on the power and transportation sector. But America can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. If renewed public investment will push for innovation in our cleaning our grid and our commutes, we need the creativity, design ethos and tenacity of the construction sector to rise up and address the remaining 20% carbon reduction we lost in the shuffle between the final language of the IRA and Build Back Better Act (BBB). That represents an investment of $186 billion. Just Los Angeles, Houston, NYC and Chicago alone will see $500 billion in construction by 2030.

Predicting how much of that will be Class A office space, versus affordable residential (please), new schools, accessible, green open space (pretty please), crucial infrastructure improvements, fast food restaurants, immersive Tiktok installations or something new altogether should be left to the fancy degrees of the Big 5 consultancies.

As an engineer I can tell you that the decarbonization of our supply chain and attacking embodied carbon allows every building, no matter the program, to make an outsized impact on communities and our climate commitments. By advocating for more regional supply chains and investing in lower carbon steel, concrete, glass, aluminium and insulation, we unlock improved air quality, reduced cancer rates, cleaner ports, better jobs, and stronger communities. We need California to drive this innovation, just as we did with the Buy Clean Act. But we most go beyond our municipal buildings, no matter how green. To get to the 50% or more carbon reduction we need by 2030, we need everyone in.

Consultants, builders, designers and engineers have not yet come to terms with the public health and environmental consequences of the supply chains we rely on, and we continue to overlook the dual threat of public health and climate change on environmental justice communities. The buildings that form our city (and rural) fabrics on cannot be considered truly sustainable until public health and environmental outcomes are improved across a project’s entire life cycle. We can and we must innovate for bio-based materials to replace our reliance on petrochemical

products. We can and we must electrify our construction equipment, utilize sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and require renewable diesel to lower our A4 and A5 emissions. We can and we must fight for industrial decarbonization processes that invest in environmental justice communities first and foremost. We can and we must procure materials from manufacturers committed making occupational cancer and forced labour a relic of the past. We can and we must cease building solely for unchecked growth and focus on building for best-use: investing heavily in zero-waste construction and adaptive reuse.

This is a fight that will take everyone from our corporate clients,

By Kathleen Hetrick

"As an engineer I can tell you that the decarbonization of our supply chain and attacking embodied carbon allows every building, no matter the program, to make an outsized impact on communities and our climate commitments."