We can’t focus exclusively on ‘cheap,’ driving a race to the bottom.
These decisions have little cost impact when they are integrated into the building’s design, but can help create – and sustain – the circular economy..Extending a building’s life, or giving it a second life through refurbishment, reduces the need to use yet more building materials for its replacement.
Designing adaptable buildings enables the function to change depending on its users’ needs.If COVID has taught us anything, it’s that workplaces and homes both need to be flexible to account for changing work patterns.It’s a balancing act to make sure a building can be adaptable without over-designing the structure, architecture and MEP.
But when we build smarter we can do this.Repeatable building modules which can be switched in and out depending on requirements, such as glazing vs solid cladding modules, or heating vs heating and cooling fan coil unit modules, are simple features which may prevent a building from being torn down mid-way through its life expectancy.
Through a small number of new parts, the building has a whole new lifespan, limiting its embodied carbon when compared with the alternative of a new build.. Building less volume reduces costs, embodied carbon and operational carbon.
And with more thought to whole life performance, low carbon, sustainable buildings can keep delivering benefits even after their lifetimes.By reducing the need for carbon feedstock by reusing captured CO. 2. , we will make progress toward a carbon neutral synthesis of industrial plastics..
In line with this, other chemicals, such as methanol and methane, can be replaced by bio-methanol and bio-methane, which are synthesised from biomass and wastewater sources.Using sustainable methods to produce bio-methane and bio-methanol in place of fossil fuel derived versions, helps reduce the total amount of fossil fuels circulating in the industrial plastics industry and, therefore, the extent to which emissions are generated.. A study by Gabrielli et al, investigating the benefits of carbon capture, used the visual below to show how each system works and how the captured carbon is being reused (Figure 1)..
Figure 1: via Gabrielli et al: illustrating a comparison of ‘business as usual’ chemical production against CCS and CCU via direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) techniques.Also illustrated is a biomass-based option.. 4.
(Editor: Ultra Towels)