Zero Carbon: Making it happen!
The Centre for Alternative Technology
launches new climate project.
The environmental charity, CAT has launched a
new research phase of its zero carbon Britain.
The new project aims to draw in expertise from
across a wide range of disciplines in order to
build a comprehensive body of research around
reducing carbon emissions to zero.
A major part of the new project is to bring
together architects, planners and policy makers
to look at what needs to happen to the UK
building industry in order to reduce emissions
in that sector. The climate science couldn’t be
clearer - to stabilise the climate system and stay
below the globally agreed limit of 2ºC with high
certainty, the world’s needs to move beyond
fossil fuel based energy systems and eliminate
human-made emissions of greenhouse gases
almost entirely by around mid-century.
Recent changes to policy by the UK government
show a clear lack of joined up thinking around
climate change issues, with cuts to funds for
energy efficiency programs and withdrawal of
support for the code for sustainable homes.
Housing is a major contributor to greenhouse
gas emissions and it is imperative that there is
the implementation of a zero carbon buildings
policy. As well as look at energy efficiency
issues, the next stage for housing development
is to ensure that materials used in construction
have low embodied carbon and are of low
toxicity, factors that are often overlooked in
sustainable design.
Archetech - Issue 20 [Page 68]
Tackling such the complex global challenge of
climate change requires a new kind of approach
to thinking, which joining up research and
practice across disciplines, borders, structures
and scales. CAT's new project “Zero Carbon:
Making it happen!” is actively seeking to
integrate cutting-edge thinking from those
working across the di sciplines, to identify
barriers to action and the means by which
society can overcome them.
Over the next 12 months, CAT will be building
dialogues between solutions focused
modelling and researchers working in
architecture, planning, economics, psychology,
sociology, community, history, politics, law,
democracy, arts, culture, business & the media.
CAT is also particularly interested in working
with those who are practically in the groundsuch as architects, builders and those who face
the challenges of a transition to a zero carbon
society, first hand.
www.zerocarbonbritain.com