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| 27-November-2023 |
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Contents
Part 1. Introduction
Part 2: Concepts and measures
Part 3: The built environment in the fossil economy: a history
Part 4: The China shock
Part 5: Quantifying material use, emissions and the scale of decarbonisation
Part 6: Contraction and convergence, development and urbanisation
Part 7: Embodied emissions
Part 8: Decarbonising embodied emissions
Part 9. Operational emissions and the thermal performance of buildings
Part 10. Decarbonising heating and cooling
Appendices – available in the PDF
🔥Tom Ackers is a doctoral student at New York University
🔥 Cover photography by Mikko Eley
This series of blog posts is attached as a pamphlet, which is free to download and share, under a creative commons licence
Foreword
This series of articles by Tom Ackers presents an outline of the challenge of decarbonising the built environment – the buildings and infrastructure we use – as part of tackling global heating.
In contrast to all the valuable analysis and discussion material focused on this problem at local and national scales, Tom concentrates on the global picture. It is a comprehensive survey, covering the history of construction techniques and how the stock of buildings and infrastructure expanded together with the capitalist economy in the late 20th century, how China overtook the rich industrialised countries, and the scale of the challenge in front.
Tom writes about the potential for “contraction and convergence” between the richest countries and the rest; assesses the pros and cons of approaches to fossil-free construction and fossil-free heating and cooling of buildings; and discusses the politics of change.
All this is necessary context for working on the local and national problems. The local is global. Action locally can and must address this global crisis.
I am delighted to publish this work on People & Nature: like everything on the site, it is offered for discussion, to underpin action towards superceding fossil capital and tackling global heating.
Simon Pirani
Part 1: Introduction
A critical mass of worker-led environmental activism is emerging in the built environment professions of architecture, construction, engineering, and urban design. Campaigners are seeking to remake the built environment – buildings and infrastructure – so that existing and future development is compatible with a liveable future on the planet.
In the UK, examples include the groups Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), Low Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) and Architects Declare (AD).
These new groups are building on longstanding efforts by organisations such as the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), and The Green Register. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and the Architects’ Journal (AJ), are also now very active on this front.
Collaborative initiatives like these are doing a great job in building knowledge about green transition in the built environment sector – and recasting models of professional “best practice” when faced with environmental emergency.
Indeed, this conversation is happening globally.
The built environment – in some form – is a crucial part of people’s lives almost everywhere.
In late 2021, Insulate Britain took this professional and workplace-based activism to the streets, and succeeded in pushing what is essentially an engineering problem – how well buildings retain heat – up the political agenda in the UK.
This is all hugely welcome – because the ways that we design, build and reproduce our built environments globally impose a very large proportion of societies’ environment burdens.
In the UK, the focus on insulation was also incredibly timely, as the costs of home heating leapt up during 2022, acutely sharpening a broad-based cost of living crisis.
It seems ever more urgent that practical engineering knowledge about the built environment is transmitted out into society at large. This would be an important step on the way to collectively managing decent standards of living for everyone in society and to meet multiple environmental emergencies.
Moreover, decarbonising the different aspects of the built environment is bound to interact with various forms of economic struggle – most notably, the international class struggle, and demands for economic development.
In my view, the politics of decarbonising the built environment therefore demands an internationalist approach. And in this series, I consider the built environment in relation to variant forms, directions, and distributions of economic development.
The necessary course for the future is “contraction and convergence” – with the global rich contracting their material consumption very substantially, and the global poor in many cases expanding theirs, in order to converge upwards on western living standards.
This is the case with all forms of consumption. Certainly it is the case with the construction and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure.
Contraction and convergence is specifically not about establishing universal access to current rich country norms of consumption, and prevailing norms of the built environment, that were established in the period of fossil capital.
To the contrary, contraction and convergence means a radical recomposition of global production, circulation and consumption, and a massive redistribution of useful things, globally. The existing forms of the built environment have to be overhauled, and re-oriented on need, material efficiency, a future with zero anthropogenic (i.e. human-made) greenhouse gas emissions, and a future built on social and ecological restoration.
One way there is a broad, worker-led coalition – pushing for decarbonisation of the built environment, in the context of providing for real needs. Such a movement needs to overcome the divisions within the working class between intellectual and manual work, and between different sectors of employment.
The aim of this series of ten articles is to relay something of what is at stake. I will draw from the work of ACAN, LETI and Insulate Britain, but also try to set that work in a broader historical and international perspective: the built environment as a crucial aspect of the history of capitalism.[1]
In part 2, I outline some core concepts.
In part 3, I offer a brief global history of the built environment in the context of the fossil-fueled economy. Part 4 focuses on China, now the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases.
In part 5, I focus on the materials – concrete, cement, steel, glass – deposited through this history into the world’s buildings and infrastructure, and the corresponding mass of greenhouse gas emissions.
In part 6, I relate decarbonising the built environment to the project of “contraction and convergence”. I look at forecasts for the scale of urbanisation worldwide, and the expansion in global building floor area through 2050; and I survey some low-carbon approaches to urban planning.
After that, in part 7, I focus on the embodied emissions (that is, the greenhouse gases emitted in the course of making things like buildings and infrastructure), and, in part 8, on what the reduction of these implies for economic development.
In part 9, I turn to “operational emissions” (that is, the greenhouse gases emitted while buildings are being used e.g. to provide heat, cooking fuel and electricity). There I focus on building design and thermal performance.
In part 10, I look specifically at the issues around decarbonising heating and cooling in buildings.
The parts can each be read individually, or as part of the whole. My aim has been to gather salient information in one place, and map a terrain of struggle.
I am not a climate scientist, engineer or architect. For environmental science and data on materials consumption and emissions, I look to organisations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Energy Agency (IEA), alongside peer-reviewed journal articles by academic researchers, and the work of charities and NGOs.
In some places, I have focused on, or provided examples from, the UK. Part of that is about coming across these groups like ACAN and AD, and because I have lived most of my life in the UK. However, the UK is also important for this topic on its own terms: it is where the fossil economy was born, and it remains a key centre for the financial marshalling of capital today.
Moreover, for similar historical reasons, the UK remains a centre for engineering and architectural expertise. It is also a locus internationally for financing and commissioning construction, and (arguably) a prime example of a dysfunctional “over-accumulation” of the built environment.
From the perspective of reforming the industries of the built environment, it is therefore good – and politically hopeful – that there is both theoretical and practical talk about decarbonisation in the UK, amongst workers of the built environment.
However, this needs to be a global conversation across societies as a whole, and across the working class. It concerns fundamental issues about how societies provision and distribute resources, and might do so in future in an ecologically viable way. This cannot simply be a conversation between technical specialists.
I welcome feedback. I hope people will tell me how my analysis can be developed and my proposals improved upon. And if you think I have got something wrong, please let me know by email. You can contact me at: tomackers.peopleandnature@gmail.com.
Tom Ackers, November 2023
🔥 Go to part 2
Download the whole series as a PDF here
[1] With thanks to Peter Somerville, who read and commented on a draft of the articles.
🔥 Cover photography by Mikko Eley
This series of blog posts is attached as a pamphlet, which is free to download and share, under a creative commons licence
Foreword
This series of articles by Tom Ackers presents an outline of the challenge of decarbonising the built environment – the buildings and infrastructure we use – as part of tackling global heating.
In contrast to all the valuable analysis and discussion material focused on this problem at local and national scales, Tom concentrates on the global picture. It is a comprehensive survey, covering the history of construction techniques and how the stock of buildings and infrastructure expanded together with the capitalist economy in the late 20th century, how China overtook the rich industrialised countries, and the scale of the challenge in front.
Tom writes about the potential for “contraction and convergence” between the richest countries and the rest; assesses the pros and cons of approaches to fossil-free construction and fossil-free heating and cooling of buildings; and discusses the politics of change.
All this is necessary context for working on the local and national problems. The local is global. Action locally can and must address this global crisis.
I am delighted to publish this work on People & Nature: like everything on the site, it is offered for discussion, to underpin action towards superceding fossil capital and tackling global heating.
Simon Pirani
Part 1: Introduction
A critical mass of worker-led environmental activism is emerging in the built environment professions of architecture, construction, engineering, and urban design. Campaigners are seeking to remake the built environment – buildings and infrastructure – so that existing and future development is compatible with a liveable future on the planet.
In the UK, examples include the groups Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), Low Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) and Architects Declare (AD).
These new groups are building on longstanding efforts by organisations such as the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), and The Green Register. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and the Architects’ Journal (AJ), are also now very active on this front.
Collaborative initiatives like these are doing a great job in building knowledge about green transition in the built environment sector – and recasting models of professional “best practice” when faced with environmental emergency.
Indeed, this conversation is happening globally.
The built environment – in some form – is a crucial part of people’s lives almost everywhere.
In late 2021, Insulate Britain took this professional and workplace-based activism to the streets, and succeeded in pushing what is essentially an engineering problem – how well buildings retain heat – up the political agenda in the UK.
This is all hugely welcome – because the ways that we design, build and reproduce our built environments globally impose a very large proportion of societies’ environment burdens.
In the UK, the focus on insulation was also incredibly timely, as the costs of home heating leapt up during 2022, acutely sharpening a broad-based cost of living crisis.
It seems ever more urgent that practical engineering knowledge about the built environment is transmitted out into society at large. This would be an important step on the way to collectively managing decent standards of living for everyone in society and to meet multiple environmental emergencies.
Moreover, decarbonising the different aspects of the built environment is bound to interact with various forms of economic struggle – most notably, the international class struggle, and demands for economic development.
In my view, the politics of decarbonising the built environment therefore demands an internationalist approach. And in this series, I consider the built environment in relation to variant forms, directions, and distributions of economic development.
The necessary course for the future is “contraction and convergence” – with the global rich contracting their material consumption very substantially, and the global poor in many cases expanding theirs, in order to converge upwards on western living standards.
This is the case with all forms of consumption. Certainly it is the case with the construction and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure.
Contraction and convergence is specifically not about establishing universal access to current rich country norms of consumption, and prevailing norms of the built environment, that were established in the period of fossil capital.
To the contrary, contraction and convergence means a radical recomposition of global production, circulation and consumption, and a massive redistribution of useful things, globally. The existing forms of the built environment have to be overhauled, and re-oriented on need, material efficiency, a future with zero anthropogenic (i.e. human-made) greenhouse gas emissions, and a future built on social and ecological restoration.
One way there is a broad, worker-led coalition – pushing for decarbonisation of the built environment, in the context of providing for real needs. Such a movement needs to overcome the divisions within the working class between intellectual and manual work, and between different sectors of employment.
The aim of this series of ten articles is to relay something of what is at stake. I will draw from the work of ACAN, LETI and Insulate Britain, but also try to set that work in a broader historical and international perspective: the built environment as a crucial aspect of the history of capitalism.[1]
In part 2, I outline some core concepts.
In part 3, I offer a brief global history of the built environment in the context of the fossil-fueled economy. Part 4 focuses on China, now the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases.
In part 5, I focus on the materials – concrete, cement, steel, glass – deposited through this history into the world’s buildings and infrastructure, and the corresponding mass of greenhouse gas emissions.
In part 6, I relate decarbonising the built environment to the project of “contraction and convergence”. I look at forecasts for the scale of urbanisation worldwide, and the expansion in global building floor area through 2050; and I survey some low-carbon approaches to urban planning.
After that, in part 7, I focus on the embodied emissions (that is, the greenhouse gases emitted in the course of making things like buildings and infrastructure), and, in part 8, on what the reduction of these implies for economic development.
In part 9, I turn to “operational emissions” (that is, the greenhouse gases emitted while buildings are being used e.g. to provide heat, cooking fuel and electricity). There I focus on building design and thermal performance.
In part 10, I look specifically at the issues around decarbonising heating and cooling in buildings.
The parts can each be read individually, or as part of the whole. My aim has been to gather salient information in one place, and map a terrain of struggle.
I am not a climate scientist, engineer or architect. For environmental science and data on materials consumption and emissions, I look to organisations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Energy Agency (IEA), alongside peer-reviewed journal articles by academic researchers, and the work of charities and NGOs.
In some places, I have focused on, or provided examples from, the UK. Part of that is about coming across these groups like ACAN and AD, and because I have lived most of my life in the UK. However, the UK is also important for this topic on its own terms: it is where the fossil economy was born, and it remains a key centre for the financial marshalling of capital today.
Moreover, for similar historical reasons, the UK remains a centre for engineering and architectural expertise. It is also a locus internationally for financing and commissioning construction, and (arguably) a prime example of a dysfunctional “over-accumulation” of the built environment.
From the perspective of reforming the industries of the built environment, it is therefore good – and politically hopeful – that there is both theoretical and practical talk about decarbonisation in the UK, amongst workers of the built environment.
However, this needs to be a global conversation across societies as a whole, and across the working class. It concerns fundamental issues about how societies provision and distribute resources, and might do so in future in an ecologically viable way. This cannot simply be a conversation between technical specialists.
I welcome feedback. I hope people will tell me how my analysis can be developed and my proposals improved upon. And if you think I have got something wrong, please let me know by email. You can contact me at: tomackers.peopleandnature@gmail.com.
Tom Ackers, November 2023
🔥 Go to part 2
Download the whole series as a PDF here
[1] With thanks to Peter Somerville, who read and commented on a draft of the articles.
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