JUNE - JULY 2022
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BIE’s Building for Climate Change programme heralds an exciting and substantial change from the regulator in terms of planned requirements for carbon reporting and carbon caps in building regulation, including the Building Code. There is no doubt that we are in a climate crisis and we need to reduce carbon emissions immediately. That requires some hard conversations that we are not yet having.
Carbon emissions now or later?
Over the past few years there have been misinformed and unhelpful assertions around the relative environmental benefits of concrete, steel, and timber. Every material has its place and determining the relative performance of each is
The construction conversations we should be having HERA chief executive Troy Coyle with suggestions on how to generate the discussion and solutions we need ahead of tough decisions around the climate crisis complex. Small studies are often not appropriately extrapolated to make broad claims, particularly as such comparisons need to be robust, impartial, and evidence based. Some of this debate has been focused on the relative benefits of reducing carbon now (where timber has an
advantage) versus reducing carbon for all time (steel has an advantage here because of its infinite recyclability). Timber releases all of its stored carbon back into the atmosphere at the end of the building’s life. To meet our national carbon reduction targets and to secure intergenerational wellbeing, we need to find
Source; SCNZ (Steel Construction New Zealand)
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a balance of both short and sustained reductions. There is no point reducing the upfront carbon emissions now if they are only going to be released back into the atmosphere in our children’s lifetimes. That doesn’t make sense, and there is no national conversation about putting greater weight on adequately considering Module D (end of life) in the assessment of sustainable, #greenconstruction. We need sector leadership on end of life issues so that materials aren't simply ticking a box when it comes to addressing decarbonising 'now', but rather realising this issue means future proofing and thinking what that looks like for our generations to come. There is no meaningful national discussion about how we change the way we think about our homes, and the choices we make when building or renovating. Where is the conversation about the trade-offs between spending more money on luxury or nice-tohave-items (for those who can afford them) versus spending that money on making our building stock zero or low-carbon? Hopefully, the changes in regulation will stimulate those conversations more.
