What the construction industry and architects can do to help tackle climate change
In the fight against climate change, the focus has rightly been on the need to stop using fossil fuels and to redesign our transportation systems, technology issues I’ve discussed at length. But as the EU points out, buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in Europe.
Some 35% of buildings in Europe are more than 50 years old and about 75% are energy inefficient, while only 0.4–1.2% of building stock is renovated each year, which in all probability that in terms of individual and institutional investment, making our homes energy efficient is going to cost a lot more than buying a new car, but will likely save more money in the long-run.
The construction sector is increasingly using the latest technology to help tackle climate change. In Oslo, a consortium of architects, engineers, designers and environmental experts called Powerhouse is developing technologies to not only make buildings more energy efficient, but are going further, trying to make them energy positive, into net energy producers able to contribute to the national grid. Working on new buildings and renovations, Powerhouse designs can accommodate large areas of solar panels and accumulator batteries, turning buildings into mini-power plants. The building in the illustration, Brattørkaia, is an eight-story office complex capable of generating 485,000 kWh annually, of which the vast majority is returned to the grid (the average energy consumption of a home in chilly Norway is around 20,000 kWh, compared to about 9,922 kWh in Spain or 10,399 kWh in the United States), generating significant savings and a reduction in generation needs.
A building’s energy status is not based on the materials used in its construction, which needs to change. Greater use of recycled and manufactured materials in an environmentally friendly manner is another important area, even more so considering that cement manufacturing contributes to 8% of carbon dioxide emissions, another issue that needs to be addressed if we are to meet climate change objectives. Efforts to reduce the use of cement in construction in favor of other more environmentally friendly materials are matched by changes in the technology used to produce cement and concrete, the most common humanly made product on earth, which include innovation in the use of materials that allow a progressive decarbonization of the processes to obtain new types of more efficiently made cement.
If we are to meet the goals outlined in the Paris agreements, architecture, construction and the cement industry are going to have to start improving the technologies they use.
(En español, aquí)
