Co-Leader of the Green Party Jonathan Bartley has said at the recent Building Zero Carbon Britain event  that tackling the climate emergency means going with what “the science demands and not what is seen as politically possible.”

Bartley noted that in 2017 the climate emergency was scarcely discussed, yet now “50-60% of people will take climate into account at the next election.” [emaillocker id=”71749″]

He also criticised Government targets as still posing a substantial climate risk: “2050 is a target which will leave us with a 50% chance of runaway climate change by their own admission.”

Local Government inaction was also raised by Bartley as an obstacle, but he saw central Government to blame for this: “The framework has to come from central Government, the green revolution has to come from the bottom-up.”

Anna Bright, Chief Executive of Sustainability West Midlands suggested that the crisis should be tackled on a regional level. She described the “huge variety in ambition” between councils for the date for zero carbon which ranges between 2028 and 2041 in the West Midlands.

Bright cited councils that were successful in formulating a response have tended to be “where they’ve got some really effective and long-term business networks, and the local authorities themselves have supported green business networks.”

Dr Jannik Giesekam, Research Fellow in Industrial Climate Policy at the University of Leeds supported the change of land use highlighted in a recent report by The Committee of Climate Change (The CCC), claiming it as necessary to tackle climate change: “The CCC say we need to do 70% more tree planting than we’re currently targeting, and we’ve missed our tree planting targets for the last ten years.”

Giesekam linked this to a change in building materials, advocating for Government support of cross-laminated timber, which is a carbon-negative material. Concrete is a particular contributor to the climate crisis within construction and replacing its use could severely reduce the carbon emissions of the industry.He suggested this be enforced through regulatory action, following international examples: “Put embodied carbon into building regulations, the Dutch have done this since 2012 and they introduced the cap last year.”

Giesekam was critical of some aspects of the CCC report, particularly the lack of behavioural change accounted for. This technology gap was also raised by Paul Guest of Energy Systems Catapult who said of the report: “It’s important to take from the CCC that net zero isn’t achievable without drawing on things we consider speculative.”

Guest noted that there was a lack of incentives to encourage consumers and industry to switch to more energy efficient forms of heating, he said: “There is insufficient mechanism to drive people towards systems that are preferable from a carbon point of view, everyone understands the incumbent technology very well.”

Caterina Brandmayr of Green Alliance stressed that public support and awareness of the issue was at an all-time high: “The opportunity is now to use the public mandate and really integrate that in the political sphere.”

These sentiments were echoed by Sarah Turner of Building With Nature, a bench marker of green infrastructure: “I think the level of commitment and the level of interest is exponential at the moment.”Turner suggested that the planning stage be subject to new regulations to ensure developers were meeting targets: “Within planning there should be some sort of legislation that states biodiversity net gain, zero carbon policies should be stipulated for any new build development and redevelopment of any sites.”

The climate emergency is one of the biggest challenges faced by the industry, and more broadly, humanity.  If it is to be resolved as soon as possible, it needs investment, it needs innovation, it needs a step change in practice and most importantly it needs cooperation across industry, government and society to go beyond our present assumptions of political realities.

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