A number of the top infrastructure organisations have come forward to promise to adhere to the Construction Leadership Council’s (CLC’s) five client carbon commitments in all of their future projects.
Anglian Water, Heathrow Airport, Lower Thames Crossing (LTC), National Highways, Northumbrian Water and Sellafield have all already committed to follow the five promises as the construction industry heads towards net zero.
The five commitments the organisations will look to embed in their planning, design and construction programmes are:
PAS 2080 is the world’s first specification for decarbonising buildings and infrastructure. It was first published in 2016 and was updated last year.
By signing up to these five pledges organisations are signalling, according to the CLC, “their commitment to i) significantly cut their construction carbon emissions and ii) setting out their own roadmaps to achieve those commitments”.
CLC co-chair and Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds said: “I think the approach we’ve taken with these standards looks at how we can eliminate carbon intensive materials. With concrete products, we all know about the recent change in standards and we know that’s going to be something that will take several years.
“But it’s important that we get on that journey. And we start making those commitments and inquiries around reducing carbon in steel and other materials and areas of construction.”
East West Rail, the Environment Agency, Houses of Parliament Restoration & Renewal and National Grid are all scheduled to sign up to the pledge.
The commitments and committees were announced this morning, 29 April, at Jacobs’ London headquarters. Present at the event was the new minister of state for business and trade Alan Mak, who has also now become a co-chair of the CLC.
He said: “There are huge opportunities and potential for change here. The commitments mean there are opportunities to innovate in new materials, technologies and techniques.
“Today’s launch signifies a change in the UK construction industry with major infrastructure clients coming together to pledge their support for a series of game changing commitments to embrace cleaner, greener and more sustainable ways of working.”
LTC will act as a pathfinder project for the commitments and executive director of the scheme Matt Palmer is the industry sponsor for CLC’s programme.
He said: “These five commitments are about leadership.
“This is about simple communication, because if we’re going to decarbonise, if we’re going to reduce our emissions by 17% in the next 10 years we have to do it uniformly.
“We’ve got to do it with our supply chain, we’ve got to encourage them to do it in the same way.
“As clients, we’ve got to communicate a simple language that everyone understands.
“At the moment, if you went out there and said, ‘what are you doing on carbon?’ You’ll get 19 different answers.”
Heathrow Airport chief solutions officer Helen Elsby said: “It’s only through people coming together to make these kinds of commitments that we can show that our supply chain, show government and show the industry that the demand is there.
“Once the demand is clear then I think everything else will follow.
“That’s what we’ve been thinking through each of our commitment lenses.
“It’s that balance of making sure it’s real, making sure that we have plans that underpin it and that match to the demand that we see coming in the future.”
Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) chief executive Nick Smallwood said: ”The IPA is delighted to support the launch of the Five Client Carbon Commitments, which is one of the many stepping stones to the UK fulfilling its net zero commitments.
“A culmination of years of work from leading thinkers across industry, the plan will incentivise manufacturers and suppliers to invest in new green technologies.
“These commitments aim to reduce the costs of decarbonisation, ultimately protecting our planet for generations into the future.”
PAS 2080 was published by the British Standards Institute and was designed to help infrastructure organisations reduce carbon use throughout the entire lifecycle of an asset. The 2023 update focused on managing and reducing whole life carbon in buildings and infrastructure.
The CLC is asking client organisations to commit to using PAS2080 to create a common carbon management standard across the industry, and to put carbon reduction at the middle of their procurement processes. These pledges are a move that has been pioneered by LTC, resulting in a 50% reduction in carbon in its procurement process which concluded recently.
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