In 2021 the UK Green Building Council published its Roadmap to Zero report illustrating the UK industry’s total carbon footprint of around 200 million tonnes carbon equivalent in 2018. Then in 2023 the follow up Roadmap to Zero Progress Report estimated that same footprint around 180 million tonnes carbon equivalent in 2022. A further update of that report this year is anticipated to estimate that footprint somewhere below 170 million tonnes carbon equivalent in 2024, around 30 million tonnes higher than the budgetary pathway to zero.

To put this in context our footprint in 2050, only 24 years away, will need to be less than 10 million tonnes, requiring a reduction of at least 94% on current levels to remain consistent with our obligations under the Paris Agreement.

I make no apologies for focussing on numbers and mathematics, as the task at hand requires us to achieve a particular number – zero, whichever way the current political winds are blowing on specific nomenclature. And it is the pressure of achieving these cumulative numbers, consciously or otherwise, which has driven the decarbonisation efforts of the industry, whether regulatory, institutionally, technologically or culturally, and against which we can measure our national success or failure. Indeed it is this pressure, and the urgency of the task, which over recent years has spawned a proliferation of groups across our field committed to discovering the pathways towards that future:

Those that worked on the Part Z campaign have set out the regulatory framework for limiting embodied carbon on construction projects. The UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard sets out the embodied carbon targets, energy-in-use targets, and measurement methodologies that we need to meet year-on-year in alignment with our sectoral carbon budgets. LETI has documented many of the ways we can achieve these targets and defined what Net Zero itself means. Don’t Waste Buildings have campaigned to remove the VAT incentive to demolish our existing built assets. Isolated planning authorities are also beginning to presume against demolition responding to the Architect Journal’s Retrofirst campaign. ACAN’s own Circular Economy Policy Campaign sets out how a truly circular industry can become a reality and is representative of the knowledge sharing work that we have been central to. Community groups such as Civic Square, WeCanMake and Wessex Community Assets are showing how the retrofit revolution that we need to lower bills, increase comfort and minimise emissions from our existing housing stock can be achieved, whilst the National Retrofit Hub is nurturing and disseminating that learning. Architects Declare, the Passivhaus Trust, ASBP and AECB and others too numerous to list here have all stepped up to the task, seeking to fill the gaping regulatory hole in this country. Architectural practices such as Material Cultures, Barrault Pressacco, Material Works, BC and 51N4E are showing us how to achieve more with less. In short, we have discovered most of the answers, they are just not yet sufficiently widely adopted.

In many ways, it is amazing what these groups have achieved, predominantly on the back of voluntary efforts by committed individuals, and in the absence of the degree of legislative pressure that we have seen in France, Holland, Denmark, the wider EU, China, California, Vancouver and New York City to name a few. But next year, in 2026, we need the UK Government, and the GLA in its latest iteration of the London Plan, to embrace and build upon these efforts to bring forward the regulatory and national planning policy change which will drive the acceleration and broadening of our decarbonisation journey, the associated re-skilling of our workforce, and where necessary the re-making of the relevant market incentives.

Little of what I set out here is new or original, I’m following in the footsteps of many others making similar pleas, setting out similar facts, but if not now, then when? As atmospheric carbon concentrations rise, global temperatures increase, climate related disasters proliferate and the clock to 2050 ticks onwards, time is surely now running out and we must see collective and democratic action through government.

ACAN (Architects Climate Action Network) was founded to address the twin and related crises of climate and biodiversity, and in 2026 we will be looking to redouble our campaigning efforts, working with, and supporting the efforts of, many of those organisations mentioned above. We are a member-led organisation, currently reliant on subscriptions and small contributions, if you would like to support our efforts become a member, get involved, and support our Futurebuild Fringe Crowdfunder:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/acan-futurebuild-fringe-programme