26 THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE
“WE NEED TO HAVE ANSWERS BEFORE ANSWERS ARE IMPOSED FROM OUTSIDE OUR INDUSTRY ON OUR COUNTRY”
signposting the areas within our economy and country that will need to improve, but much will depend upon the way that customers, developers, contractors, designers and other stakeholders will respond to the challenges.” Wakeford believes that success will
come from “active leadership,” and that those companies who are prepared to take the opportunity seriously and to take a leading role their sector are “likely to be the ones who benefit.”
He also believes there is a need to understand that construction can only do so much: “We can reduce the energy used to build homes and energy used by users of homes, but the greatest challenge will be electrification of the grid and increasing our use of renewables; however that change will be enabled by the Government and its legislative programme, because it is a national challenge.”
answers are imposed from outside our industry on our country.”
A GUIDING HAND
Hoping to help the sector to tackle some of these barriers and take charge of its own role in moving to zero carbon, the group’s new handbook explains the practi- calities to professionals in the industry, as well as the reasons for taking action, and how to go about it.
In conjunction with the MCG’s first edition of the handbook, the new volume seeks to “break the opportunities that can be taken to reach net zero into discrete areas.”
As part of this, it looks at key areas to address in terms of leadership and procurement, and examines four other crucial areas that the entire industry can address, such as reducing staff and
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corporate carbon footprints, reducing project carbon emissions, reducing embodied energy, and increasing building performance.
The handbook also includes case studies from a range of businesses, with the aim of allowing construction profes- sionals across the industry to identify an example which fits with their own stage of decarbonisation.
UNCERTAINTY
Despite efforts like these, and from much of the industry, Wakeford admits that the road map to delivering a low carbon future remains unclear. However, he adds that with the “huge
challenge, there are consequently huge opportunities.” He continues that buy-in across the board is essential: “The Committee on Climate Change is good at
SUCCESS Wakeford says he believes that the likelihood of the industry’s success rests on the back of its own “ingenuity and support for its customers.” However he adds that politicians and Government agencies need to be fundamentally better at creating the environment that will allow the sector and the country as a whole to deliver net-zero solutions on a level playing field with other technologies. As an example of this, he says that the NFB’s Major Contractors Group has been recommending to the Government for the last five years that it implement streamlined planning for the most energy efficient homes and developments creating energy or heating on site, but that as yet, the Government has not enabled these “simple but effective” changes.
He concludes: “I am confident that if the Government was to overtly support these and our other endeavours, then we can deliver a housing industry that we can all be proud of, and we can tell our grandchildren that we played our part.” g
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