The more I think about decarbonization of the AEC industry, I increasingly come to realize that a significant part of the emissions reductions required would seem to be out of reach via the traditional levers available to professionals working in the industry. Low carbon design, low-carbon materials, efficiently operated buildings and all the other very important strategies and skills that we are developing and applying now to address the issue will not suffice, if we continue to build at the scale we do now. Here are my thoughts on this:
We know that we must reduce the emissions of the construction industry, and many committed individuals are attempting to address this, at the level of individual projects to materials and products to whole processes and systems. While we absolutely we should have focus on these, it may behoove this industry and those working within it to widen the scope even further. In this globalized, interconnected world, engineering, architecture, design, and construction do not happen in vacuum, separate from the rest of the society’s processes and influences. To understand the underlying reasons why our reduction mission is so difficult, perhaps even impossible, it would be useful to have an understanding of the circumstances and conditions enforced upon the construction industry by the political and economical structure of our society (generalizing to the global north here).
There comes a time when we must ask ourselves whether the conditions we work within set us up for failure or success. Can we truly ever achieve the goals we are setting regarding carbon emissions, if we do not allow ourselves to question the fundamental societal structure we and all other industries operate within? Similar to the almost now laughable state of climate commitments, with promises, postponements, extensions, and so far failures to deliver, we find ourselves bounded and restricted by the economic system we have built up around ourselves, which facilitates and fosters a certain mode of living, reliant on resource extraction and wealth accumulation, but is also spectacularly bad at enabling another mode of living, for example one which is coherent with a steady-state global resource use.
As others have lamented, AEC professionals of all types could benefit from rejecting a specialist mindset and adopting instead the ‘mater builder’ label, or simply a more neutral ‘designer’ label, and begin to view the challenge facing our industry holistically. However, even this seems insufficient to meet the challenges facing all of us today, challenge that require us all to become activists, philosophers, and politicians. As designers of the built environment, which so greatly contributes to the current crises of humanity, we have a duty to investigate and speak on root causes. As designers, we must be able to situate and contextualize ourselves, our work and our challenges in the wider society and economy that dictates the bounds of our sector.
These bounds are superficially recognized by most practitioners, but rarely interrogating. The construction industry is strictly subject to the realities of a capitalist economy. Not only do clients have the final say in all matters, the great majority of them operate under the law of profit, faithfully, although not necessarily consciously, acting their role firstly as a player dictated to participate in an economy, and accumulate wealth, and then, only as a second concern, to actually fulfill real human needs. Very many very real human needs for buildings, structures, spaces, and shelter exist, but many projects whose aim ostensibly is to meet such needs, are hijacked by the profit motive, such that the quality in meeting the needs, if they are met at all, is diminished. The general reduction in quality of our built environment, and the associated reduced lifespan of our buildings, speaks to this. A great many construction projects, especially in the global north, are viewed foremost as investment assets and economic stimulus strategies, and only secondarily as objects that fulfill societal needs, objects for shelter, learning, healing or joy. Thus, the capitalist economy structure that reigns in most of the world stipulates that it is always a good decision to build, on account of the economic activity such a decision generates, even when such a decision does not lead to the proper fulfillment of the needs which are the alleged reason to build in the first place. Thus we can see how such a framework bounding the construction industry will act to counter, or even negate, all of the hard-fought reduction efforts that happen within the industry.
Now, if we accept that the operating paradigm of not just the construction industry, but the economy that governs it, is not setting us up for success, we can begin to explore options. An economy that doesn’t require growth and profit accumulation would engender a very different world to the one we live in today. Perhaps the focus of the construction sector could then be on meeting real needs in a high-quality and durable way while minimizing energy and material use. Simultaneously, ‘Reduce' could fundamentally mean build less stuff. This would put all of our current work on reduction and decarbonization to good use, but significantly it might allow us to simply reduce the raw numbers we are operating with, buying precious time and greatly accelerating our decarbonization progress.
The first objection to the idea of building less is obviously that this means less work, and less work means fewer people employed to perform said work. This might seem like a terrible idea, leading straight to widespread unemployment and recession, and indeed it probably is under the current societal model, but what if we allow ourselves to question the societal framework we live in now? Is there a reality where unemployment is a positively loaded word? A world where building less frees up time and space for more happiness, more wellbeing, more enjoyment?
Degrowth scholars have long studied these very questions, and I would suggest readers look to them for thorough and credible answers. The critical issue in relation to the construction sector is how a different economic paradigm, where well-being is the guiding star of all activity, rather than wealth accumulation, with more wealth distribution, less inequality, and a universal basic income program would allow individuals to live and thrive without maximizing work output for compensation. Under such a system, a working week could conceivably shrink to the half while maintaining and even increasing well-being, reducing the total industry output similarly, and with that, theoretically also the associated emissions.
Other important thoughts include the question of compensation for doing less. If a clever consultant can solve a client's problem by doing less rather than more, under the current system they are ‘punished’, in terms of their remuneration, for acting in the interest of the planet. The same goes for a carpenter or builder who meets needs by doing less. Can taxes on carbon emissions, or on material and resource use, be a tool to encourage designers to do more with less?
The problem I come up against when contemplating working in the AEC industry is that, even if I could claim that I was able to be the one who built the most sustainable buildings in the world, I would still be contributing, in however miniscule way, to the total sector emissions. We simply are not yet able to construct buildings in a zero-carbon way, and much of the underlying reason for this lies in way the society and economy, within whose boundaries we work, operates. How then to justify doing the work, if our best efforts are still moving the needle in the wrong direction?
I hope there are others who can provide me with answers to this!
