Juliette Morgan, Head of Campus at British Land has highlighted the huge potential carbon savings within the construction industry.

She said, speaking at the recent Building Zero Carbon Britain conference: “There are 30 gigatons of potential C02 reduction in our sector until 2030.”

British Land are behind plans to create a new £4bn town in London’s Canada Water, a product of “5 years of community investment,” according to Morgan.

British Land has been working on their carbon efficiency developing BREEAM rated buildings and refurbished their estate such as their One Triton Square asset which has recently seen a £144m retrofit, making 40% carbon savings.

The lack of innovation within construction was raised by Morgan who pointed out that R&D spending was only 1% of revenue within the industry and quipped: “If you were Ancient Egyptian and turned up on a building site today, it would look broadly like it did in the Egyptian times.”

Concrete has a particularly negative environmental impact, which Morgan pointed out that “if concrete was a country it would be the third biggest country on emissions behind China and India.”

British Land have been exploring timber, and more recently Bamboo as alternative materials as well as modelling their scope 3 emissions.

Canary Wharf Group are a major developer within the Capital and Senior Sustainability Manager at the firm Kristina Arsenievich described how the firm was tackling the climate crisis in the construction of the “increasing stock of private and affordable housing” in the area.

Arsenievich criticised the notion that sustainability was a new issue: “In terms of recognising the scale of challenge, this isn’t the first time we’ve faced sustainability.”

Canary Wharf Group was itself among “the first to use BREEAM”, a standard for high sustainability in buildings.

Sustainability within placemaking was also raised by Arsenievich, who said the firm were “compliant with code level 4, looking to embed sustainability and social integration as well as well-being in all of our public realm.”

Within client energy us Arsenievich told delegates that their method was to proceed “through cooperation, working really close with tenants and our supply chain.” 

“We are past the point where we have any choice to act, we have to do more, we have to do it faster” was the rallying call of the Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, Cllr Bridget Smith. Smith declared the pledge of the district to become “a carbon neutral district long before 2050.”

South Cambridgeshire is currently the district with the most environmentally friendly administration in the East of England with a leadership that has “put in more money than any other authority to being green to our core”, according to Smith.

She said the authority has taken a devolved approach to tackling the issue in the region: “We’ve been giving quite generous grants to parish councils to do their own bottom-up projects.”

Transport for London, far from just being providers of London’s travel network are “untaking one of London’s biggest redevelopment programmes” according to Derek Wilson, Senior Sustainable Development Manager with the organisation.

Whilst he accepted the necessity of sustainability to proceed in a “commercially viable manner” he criticised the notion that sustainability was incompatible with affordability, he said: “This facetious argument that I see developers making that this is going to cost more money therefore people can’t afford a house, it’s just not true.”

Within transportation he stressed the prioritization of “green infrastructure, healthy streets and good performance.”

Transport for London are also planning on monitoring the performance of their developments, Wilson said: “First and foremost we’ve dedicated to do post-occupancy on every building that we develop.”

Grosvenor Group, a major family-owned property company which owns large parts of Mayfair and Belgravia, have been “spending £50m retrofitting buildings” according to Chantal Henderson, Director of Commercial Finance for the firm.

The group has recently published their sustainability goals, seeking to contribute to the carbon neutral agenda. Henderson discussed how on their new builds they have “modelled climate resilience into the buildings themselves.”

The group is also seeking to tackle the housing crisis and is focusing on “creating social and economic value” according to Henderson. She also criticised the reticence of some firms to act on the climate crisis, questioning “how much data do we need to know it’s the right thing to do?”

Citu’s Managing Director Chris Thompson described the mission of the firm: “Everything we do is to help tackle the climate crisis that we have.”

The firm have recently been developing a 20-acre Climate Innovation District in Leeds

The wide variety of institutions targeting a carbon neutral future from major land owners and developers, to innovative market disruptors, Government and transport bodies can only show the potential that there is to tackle the crisis through all sectors working at once.