Latest / Unfolding: a circular economy podcast / Episode 16 - COPcast Day 2
Transcript
- talkinghead: Hi, so I'm on my own today. Ian is probably in the air as we speak with Marcus making their way to Antalya. So it's just me today. Busy day at COP31. First off to the Sustainable Innovation Forum, which was outside the main COP area. And that required getting a tram to the Expo and then a shuttle bus down to the Innovation Forum. Lots of problems with transport for some delegates, but the Sustainable Innovation Forum was a really interesting, I wish I could have stayed there longer, a really interesting place. I saw Chris Skidmore speak, Simon Gupta, chair of the Green Growth Fund, really interesting guy, Sir Andrew Steer, who, you know... economist, very clever and told a story about being quite inspirational actually how he was at the 1992 Earth Summit and saw all these leaders set up the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, mean the Climate Convention. He was there at that time so here we are, COP31. quite some years later, still having these discussions. But I am kind of mindful what was said yesterday by Mark Watts, for example, and was repeated again to a certain extent today, which was however frustrating the process is, however slow. And as Mark kind of said, it's almost like it was designed to be that way, to stop progress. we'd have been well above four degrees by now or heading that way if it wasn't for the action that's already been taken. And despite the fact that the IMF have produced this working paper around this thing called the generalized Jevons paradox, where as we get more efficient, we still tend to use more fossil fuels. So fossil fuel use has gone up. Imagine what that would have been if we didn't have that renewable energy. sector developing and we weren't having that transition. I was moderating a panel today with Wenyu from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Duncan Price who is a partner at Bureau Huppold and I managed to grab Duncan for 10 minutes to have a quick chat so I'll put him on. After this we talked about building the built environment and carbon emissions and how they can be abated. And we did talk in the panel about hard to abate emissions and this idea that's developing that you need to have circular economy as a way to reduce demand as well as technology to reduce emissions or capture emissions as we make that transition to the metals and minerals economy as Janets Patocnik would say. So all very exciting and then later on I was on a panel talking about reuse as it happens in the zero waste stage. I should say that on the where COP31 is being held it's basically an exhibition centre, mean an amazing exhibition centre, it's not like the NEC, no disrespect but you know it's... a really nice, it's a bit like, I suppose, a combination of the NEC and the 2012 Olympic Park, if you can imagine that. It's been done up beautifully. part of that, there are pavilions. I'll show you some film that I took of going in and then going to the GB pavilion. And there's the plenary sessions and then the press and all of that kind of stuff. And as you walk through and on... you can go out to the green zone but on the right there is another building, a beautiful building and that houses what's called the zero waste museum and there are three big stages there and I was on the main zero waste stage talking about reuse with fellow panellists, Magesh from Ickley, Ben Dixon from Systemic. And we had Bridget Shay, who's a commissioner from Travis County in Austin, Texas, who was absolutely delighted about the results of the midterms. And also, yeah, from ICLEI, we had Sonia Dan, who is the director of global implementation and business development at ICLEI. So a big kind of important panel. Talking about some really interesting things that were really kind of for me at least had the whole span from Neighborhood level all the way up to to the global and you know I made the point as as we've seen in these podcasts that We need all that bottom-up stuff. We absolutely need people to get cracking and do stuff But it needs support it from the top down in order to make it stick basically so Ian's back tomorrow I bumped into the rap crowd in the Zero Waste canteen, David, Katherine, Jen and Alicia and we had a chat there. I'm Katherine tomorrow at the GB Pavilion so stay tuned tomorrow for that interview with Katherine David from CEO of Rap of course and yeah I'll play the interview with With Duncan from Bureau Hap Hold. Stay tuned and see you same time Late-ish as soon as I can get this published tomorrow. Thanks. Bye bye speaker-0: Hi Wayne, I'm Duncan Price, I'm a partner at Bureau Hapold, I'm globally for sustainability and climate change. speaker-1: And what's your what are you doing here? What's your role at today's event? speaker-0: Today's event is about showcasing solutions and implementation around embodied carbon circularity as well as climate resilience. These things are often interconnected, right? And think what's really interesting about the Sustainable Innovation Forum in particular is that away from the main COP discussions, you really focus on action and kind of lifting the hood, diving down, getting into a bit more detail about what you can actually do. speaker-1: And so you've done some work with cities, I think, and you've done some work in London, yeah. Tell us a bit about speaker-0: Bye. Yeah, well, Burehapa does a lot of work in cities around the world, both existing cities and new cities. And a couple of years ago, we did quite a lot of work with C40 cities across their clean construction programme, which was really looking at how cities can affect a step change in terms of making better use of the built assets that they have either under their direct control or their influence through various policy levers. And so looking at what are the policy shifts that can be made to make better use of existing buildings to adapt and reuse what we've got to support a circular economy, particularly around building materials and reuse and then encouraging a shift towards low embodied carbon materials as well so effectively an embodied carbon in circularity hierarchy applied to the construction sector. speaker-1: Okay, can you just talk to me a bit more about that sounds really interesting. So just tell me that again, embodied carbon hierarchy. speaker-0: Well, we call it a clean construction hierarchy. It's effectively starting off by looking at how we can make better use of the assets already within existing cities because a lot of cities will have underused assets which are sitting empty or could be repurposed for much more effective use. Look, yeah, it's adapting, reusing, investing in existing buildings, making better use of them for the sharing economy. And then looking at how you can then adapt and refurbish existing buildings, bring them back to life, adapt to reuse. And then if you'll start to shift into... new build design or designing buildings for redevelopment, how do you build in flexibility and adaptability so that you can change use over time and also use low embodied carbon materials in refurbishment and the fit out and so on so that you can really radically reduce the carbon associated with the construction sector and the built environment. speaker-1: The production centre is like one of those sectors that is really high in carbon, in body carbon because of things like presumably concrete and steel and material extraction processing and that goes into that that can't easily be electrified and therefore you can't easily use renewables presumably. So is that is that your speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. mean, in the world of buildings, we often think about whole life carbon. There's your whole life carbon, there's two components to it. There's the embodied carbon of construction and redevelopment, and then there's the operational carbon. And on the latter, we can do a lot with that with electrification, but you've got to also think about the embodied carbon of construction and redevelopment. And within that, a lot of it's about reducing the need for new materials, but also how do you make better use of the existing materials. that are in circulation, right? And so there's a very clear need for building a circular economy across cities because they're the perfect scale to do it, right? You've got the ability to aggregate, to consolidate, to share materials. And the challenges at the moment is very fragmented and you don't actually have that sort of joined up approach very often. there's a key... speaker-1: Do you mean across cities? speaker-0: I'd say more between cities. I think cities generally have a scale where you can build an ecosystem of material flows and if you're simultaneously building and refurbishing, demolishing, repurposing, if you can consider strategic view about what materials you need where and when and you can build the supply chains to harvest materials from one building, project and move them into the next, then you really can get a step change in terms of the reductions of embodied carbon. you speaker-1: so that is that about infrastructure and speaker-0: It's partly about infrastructure and logistics, it's also about common policies and frameworks. So this is where I think London's done really well. So any new major development going to the mayor for planning permission needs to have a circular economy statement, which has been very helpful, I think, for generating a common understanding, a common language of what the opportunities are. And then you've seen authorities within the city, like the City of London Corporation or Westminster City Council, being very taking a very leadership position on their retrofit first policies and encouraging both a heavy justification for redevelopment against all the other options, but also hardwiring specific material reuse targets into planning consents attached to new development. And so those policy levers are creating some of the sort of clarity that the supply chain needs, whether you're a developer or or supply chain participant, know, designer, contractor, material supplier, that you can build a business in London in those kind of services. speaker-1: Because you've got some kind of policy set. speaker-0: Policy certainty, yeah. I mean as much as you ever have policy certainty, right? speaker-1: Do you I mean I I maybe it's an unfair question but given that you've worked with Seafort Cities, d presumably you y y you've got a good view of cities kind of globally European speaker-0: least. speaker-1: one. Do you do you think of can you think of any other kind of leading examples? speaker-0: We did deep dives with about six cities, Mexico City, Ecolenie, Crescent City, Qingdao, Toronto. I'd say it's got some great examples like Toronto has really gone for it on mass timber, for example, which is really interesting. speaker-1: Yeah, as a building. speaker-0: As a building material, they recognise what they're really good at and what the opportunities are there. What you actually find is there's lots of commonalities around the world of policy levers that cities can pull. They have varying different powers, but generally they have some sort of planning and permitting. They have some convening power. They probably have a procurement opportunity in the buildings that they own and control themselves. They might have space to put in aggregation. centres, consolidation centres, there might also have some role in logistics and transportation. So there's often lots of things that cities can do. speaker-1: There there needs to be a kind of playbook. Is there s is that something you've done or you're thinking of doing speaker-0: It's funny you should say that, so there are some good examples. mean, C40's got a wealth of knowledge on their knowledge hub, some of the great infographics that you can see from the work that we've done. equally in some of the other cities like the City of London Corporation within London, we help them write their supplementary planning document on sustainable design and construction, well, planning for sustainability it's called. And within there, there's different typologies of building and development and different approaches to thematic areas. including circular economy to try and create a bit of that playbook so that people get a sense of what are the things they need to do if you're to play a role in delivering this change to all circular economy. speaker-1: Do you have any what objectives for cop either personally or professional? speaker-0: Personally, I'd say two three objectives. I'm wearing two hats. I'm wearing a hat as a partner of Bureau Hathold. So I want to make sure that Bureau Hathold is providing a leading business voice, particularly with the clients that we work with, investors, developers, asset managers. Some of those are here at COP, so we want to be supporting them with their asks of the policymakers. And I'm also here as a member of the UK Queen Building Council's delegation. I'm B.O.H.A.B.O. to the organisational partner of UK GBC. I'm one of the ambassadors of the Building Life Campaign. there's a kind of bigger role here which is shaping and forming overall policy, international city and national policy around the built environment, particularly around electrification, which is a very big theme, the 35 by 35 campaign to really electrify the built environment. environment and get policy levers in place for that. And then also about climate resilience because we need to be thinking about transition planning across decarbonisation and resilience together. It's much more cost effective and it makes the environment fit for the future. So taking part in round table discussions like one this afternoon with Chris Gidmore and Simon Werter which is looking at how do we deal with those two issues together. speaker-1: And there seems to be a at the Sustainable Innovation Forum which is w which is kind of a a side event I guess to to COP, there seems to be a a few sort of green building people here. Is there a a bit of a move is that always part of COP? speaker-0: Yeah, in my experience there's always lots of great conversations. Sometimes it's the fringe events where actually the deeper, richer conversations happen. I'll at the Blue Zone tomorrow with World GBC, UK GBC, We Need Business Coalition. So a lot of the NGOs very active in the built environment. Where will you congregate? speaker-1: Where do guys hang out? Is there a pavilion or a speaker-0: I think the business pavilion, Global ABC, there's a few places in the blue zone. And I think it's really interesting to see this coming together of the energy industry, particularly around electrification and renewable energy with the built environment sector. And you can't solve climate change without tackling cities. And cities are really at the front line of adapting to climate change as well. And so as we move from... decarbonising the grid to electrifying the economy. You've got to move further down the energy supply from generation to transmission, distribution and end use, which means buildings and cities as much as transport. speaker-1: It's brilliantly laid out, thank you for that. yeah, okay, I guess one final thing from my perspective is we're here like talking about the circular economy and as we as we become electro states and we move from fossil fuel to electro elect electro and renewable, we move from oil to metals and minerals, you know, we move from an oil economy to the economies that depend upon access to materials and probably very raw materials I guess, rare materials. And as we make that transition we need to start thinking about demand reduction and And downstream recycling and reuse and repair. So it's interesting that is all encapsulated in everything that you've said about making best use of buildings, sharing, and then designing for disassembly and all of that kind of stuff. And then and then linking that up to the electro state. So it's like a a microcosm of the circular economy in one specific sector from end to end, isn't it? speaker-0: It is. I'm also reminded of a great event I saw last week, Ordersgate ran, which had Lord O'Day Turner from the Energy Transitions Commission and they just published a report on Friday and they're looking at what would it take to get back to 1.5 or 1.8 degrees and they're saying what's realistically possible. At the moment global policy takes us to 2.6 degrees of global heating. You can get about halfway back to 1.8 through electrification but you then need to go into the hard to abate sectors, which besides aviation and shipping also is about materials, industry, concrete, steel and so on. speaker-1: traditional way to do that has been, it seems to me at least, has been through technology. And that won't do it alone. speaker-0: That's right, so I think most of the pathways will include a lot of CCS at the end of that process which will probably drive up costs. So that becomes arguably a real need to make better use of the materials and resources we've already got. Hence the role for circular economy. speaker-1: Carbon is embedded as you extract and process, you can't capture that. So that you've already kind of embedded those emissions in the extraction and processing of those of those minerals. speaker-0: Yeah, so you want to really make best use of the materials you've already got, right? Keep them in high value circulation for as long as possible. speaker-1: We agree fundamentally and vi and vigorously, so that's a good place to end, thanks. speaker-0: Excellent, thank you very much. speaker-1: Brilliant, that was great. Enjoy that. speaker-0: Okay, ready to rock and roll. speaker-1: Right. So yeah, could you introduce speaker-0: Hi Wayne, I'm Duncan Price, I'm a partner at Bureau Hapold, I'm globally for sustainability and climate change. speaker-1: And what's your what are you doing here? What's your role at today's event? speaker-0: Today's event is about showcasing solutions and implementation around embodied carbon circularity as well as climate resilience. These things are often interconnected, right? And think what's really interesting about the Sustainable Innovation Forum in particular is that away from the main COP discussions, you really focus on action and kind of lifting the hood, diving down, getting into a bit more detail about what you can actually do. speaker-1: And so you've done some work with cities, I think, and you've done some work in London, yeah. Tell us a bit about speaker-0: Bye. Yeah, well, Burehapa does a lot of work in cities around the world, both existing cities and new cities. And a couple of years ago, we did quite a lot of work with C40 cities across their clean construction programme, which was really looking at how cities can affect a step change in terms of making better use of the built assets that they have either under their direct control or their influence through various policy levers. And so looking at what are the policy shifts that can be made to make better use of existing buildings to adapt and reuse what we've got to support a circular economy, particularly around building materials and reuse and then encouraging a shift towards low embodied carbon materials as well so effectively an embodied carbon in circularity hierarchy applied to the construction sector. speaker-1: Okay, can you just talk to me a bit more about that sounds really interesting. So just tell me that again, embodied carbon hierarchy. speaker-0: Well, we call it a clean construction hierarchy. It's effectively starting off by looking at how we can make better use of the assets already within existing cities because a lot of cities will have underused assets which are sitting empty or could be repurposed for much more effective use. Look, yeah, it's adapting, reusing, investing in existing buildings, making better use of them for the sharing economy. And then looking at how you can then adapt and refurbish existing buildings, bring them back to life, adapt to reuse. And then if you'll start to shift into... new build design or designing buildings for redevelopment, how do you build in flexibility and adaptability so that you can change use over time and also use low embodied carbon materials in refurbishment and the fit out and so on so that you can really radically reduce the carbon associated with the construction sector and the built environment. speaker-1: The production centre is like one of those sectors that is really high in carbon, in body carbon because of things like presumably concrete and steel and material extraction processing and that goes into that that can't easily be electrified and therefore you can't easily use renewables presumably. So is that is that your speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. mean, in the world of buildings, we often think about whole life carbon. There's your whole life carbon, there's two components to it. There's the embodied carbon of construction and redevelopment, and then there's the operational carbon. And on the latter, we can do a lot with that with electrification, but you've got to also think about the embodied carbon of construction and redevelopment. And within that, a lot of it's about reducing the need for new materials, but also how do you make better use of the existing materials. that are in circulation, right? And so there's a very clear need for building a circular economy across cities because they're the perfect scale to do it, right? You've got the ability to aggregate, to consolidate, to share materials. And the challenges at the moment is very fragmented and you don't actually have that sort of joined up approach very often. there's a key... speaker-1: Do you mean across cities? speaker-0: I'd say more between cities. I think cities generally have a scale where you can build an ecosystem of material flows and if you're simultaneously building and refurbishing, demolishing, repurposing, if you can consider strategic view about what materials you need where and when and you can build the supply chains to harvest materials from one building, project and move them into the next, then you really can get a step change in terms of the reductions of embodied carbon. you speaker-1: so that is that about infrastructure and speaker-0: It's partly about infrastructure and logistics, it's also about common policies and frameworks. So this is where I think London's done really well. So any new major development going to the mayor for planning permission needs to have a circular economy statement, which has been very helpful, I think, for generating a common understanding, a common language of what the opportunities are. And then you've seen authorities within the city, like the City of London Corporation or Westminster City Council, being very taking a very leadership position on their retrofit first policies and encouraging both a heavy justification for redevelopment against all the other options, but also hardwiring specific material reuse targets into planning consents attached to new development. And so those policy levers are creating some of the sort of clarity that the supply chain needs, whether you're a developer or or supply chain participant, know, designer, contractor, material supplier, that you can build a business in London in those kind of services. speaker-1: Because you've got some kind of policy set. speaker-0: Policy certainty, yeah. I mean as much as you ever have policy certainty, right? speaker-1: Do you I mean I I maybe it's an unfair question but given that you've worked with Seafort Cities, d presumably you y y you've got a good view of cities kind of globally European speaker-0: least. speaker-1: one. Do you do you think of can you think of any other kind of leading examples? speaker-0: We did deep dives with about six cities, Mexico City, Ecolenie, Crescent City, Qingdao, Toronto. I'd say it's got some great examples like Toronto has really gone for it on mass timber, for example, which is really interesting. speaker-1: Yeah, as a building. speaker-0: As a building material, they recognise what they're really good at and what the opportunities are there. What you actually find is there's lots of commonalities around the world of policy levers that cities can pull. They have varying different powers, but generally they have some sort of planning and permitting. They have some convening power. They probably have a procurement opportunity in the buildings that they own and control themselves. They might have space to put in aggregation. centres, consolidation centres, there might also have some role in logistics and transportation. So there's often lots of things that cities can do. speaker-1: There there needs to be a kind of playbook. Is there s is that something you've done or you're thinking of doing speaker-0: It's funny you should say that, so there are some good examples. mean, C40's got a wealth of knowledge on their knowledge hub, some of the great infographics that you can see from the work that we've done. equally in some of the other cities like the City of London Corporation within London, we help them write their supplementary planning document on sustainable design and construction, well, planning for sustainability it's called. And within there, there's different typologies of building and development and different approaches to thematic areas. including circular economy to try and create a bit of that playbook so that people get a sense of what are the things they need to do if you're to play a role in delivering this change to all circular economy. speaker-1: Do you have any what objectives for cop either personally or professional? speaker-0: Personally, I'd say two three objectives. I'm wearing two hats. I'm wearing a hat as a partner of Bureau Hathold. So I want to make sure that Bureau Hathold is providing a leading business voice, particularly with the clients that we work with, investors, developers, asset managers. Some of those are here at COP, so we want to be supporting them with their asks of the policymakers. And I'm also here as a member of the UK Queen Building Council's delegation. I'm B.O.H.A.B.O. to the organisational partner of UK GBC. I'm one of the ambassadors of the Building Life Campaign. there's a kind of bigger role here which is shaping and forming overall policy, international city and national policy around the built environment, particularly around electrification, which is a very big theme, the 35 by 35 campaign to really electrify the built environment. environment and get policy levers in place for that. And then also about climate resilience because we need to be thinking about transition planning across decarbonisation and resilience together. It's much more cost effective and it makes the environment fit for the future. So taking part in round table discussions like one this afternoon with Chris Gidmore and Simon Werter which is looking at how do we deal with those two issues together. speaker-1: And there seems to be a at the Sustainable Innovation Forum which is w which is kind of a a side event I guess to to COP, there seems to be a a few sort of green building people here. Is there a a bit of a move is that always part of COP? speaker-0: Yeah, in my experience there's always lots of great conversations. Sometimes it's the fringe events where actually the deeper, richer conversations happen. I'll at the Blue Zone tomorrow with World GBC, UK GBC, We Need Business Coalition. So a lot of the NGOs very active in the built environment. Where will you congregate? speaker-1: Where do guys hang out? Is there a pavilion or a speaker-0: I think the business pavilion, Global ABC, there's a few places in the blue zone. And I think it's really interesting to see this coming together of the energy industry, particularly around electrification and renewable energy with the built environment sector. And you can't solve climate change without tackling cities. And cities are really at the front line of adapting to climate change as well. And so as we move from... decarbonising the grid to electrifying the economy. You've got to move further down the energy supply from generation to transmission, distribution and end use, which means buildings and cities as much as transport. speaker-1: It's brilliantly laid out, thank you for that. yeah, okay, I guess one final thing from my perspective is we're here like talking about the circular economy and as we as we become electro states and we move from fossil fuel to electro elect electro and renewable, we move from oil to metals and minerals, you know, we move from an oil economy to the economies that depend upon access to materials and probably very raw materials I guess, rare materials. And as we make that transition we need to start thinking about demand reduction and And downstream recycling and reuse and repair. So it's interesting that is all encapsulated in everything that you've said about making best use of buildings, sharing, and then designing for disassembly and all of that kind of stuff. And then and then linking that up to the electro state. So it's like a a microcosm of the circular economy in one specific sector from end to end, isn't it? speaker-0: It is. I'm also reminded of a great event I saw last week, Ordersgate ran, which had Lord O'Day Turner from the Energy Transitions Commission and they just published a report on Friday and they're looking at what would it take to get back to 1.5 or 1.8 degrees and they're saying what's realistically possible. At the moment global policy takes us to 2.6 degrees of global heating. You can get about halfway back to 1.8 through electrification but you then need to go into the hard to abate sectors, which besides aviation and shipping also is about materials, industry, concrete, steel and so on. speaker-1: traditional way to do that has been, it seems to me at least, has been through technology. And that won't do it alone. speaker-0: That's right, so I think most of the pathways will include a lot of CCS at the end of that process which will probably drive up costs. So that becomes arguably a real need to make better use of the materials and resources we've already got. Hence the role for circular economy. speaker-1: Carbon is embedded as you extract and process, you can't capture that. So that you've already kind of embedded those emissions in the extraction and processing of those of those minerals. speaker-0: Yeah, so you want to really make best use of the materials you've already got, right? Keep them in high value circulation for as long as possible. speaker-1: We agree fundamentally and vi and vigorously, so that's a good place to end, thanks. speaker-0: Excellent, thank you very much.