The industry has failed to hit a key target on reducing carbon emissions linked to operational site activities, CM has learned, in an embarrassing failure to improve sustainability credentials in its own backyard.
A Green Construction Board and UK Contractors Group (UKCG) report acknowledging the failure has not yet been published, despite apparently being “signed off” in late June.
In 2008, the industry adopted a voluntary target to reduce operational emissions by 15% by 2012, a goal that covered reducing emissions from site plant and equipment, site accommodation and the transport of materials to sites and waste
away from them.
A source familiar with the contents of the carbon report said: “Unfortunately, it showed that we’re not achieving what we set out to achieve in terms of the headline target. We achieved it in some areas, but not across the board.”
The target was set by the Strategic Forum in the 2008 joint government and industry strategy, the Strategy for Sustainable Construction, alongside the “halve waste to landfill” pledge and another goal on water consumption.
Missed: construction’s carbon targets
The work begun under the Strategic Forum was later absorbed into the agenda of the government-backed Green Construction Board.
The onsite emissions returns from contractors for the 2012 calendar year needed to compile the report were only collated by the UKCG this year, due to the lag in reporting cycles.
But although the resulting report was completed by June and was scheduled to be published at a government construction summit on 2 July, it has not seen the light of day.
It is understood that the three reports – onsite emissions; halving construction, demolition and excavation waste; and water use – are due to go live together on the Green Construction Board website in October.
The industry’s failure to make a significant dent in site-related carbon emissions was predicted by a group of sustainability managers at a CM round-table event in February this year.
There was a general view that the industry was continuing to rely on older plant and equipment, that the renewal rate for switching to more fuel-efficient trucks and plants had been slowed by the recession, and that manufacturers and suppliers had been slow to meet the challenge. The participants felt that main contractors had “picked the low-hanging fruit” on operational emissions but still needed to reduce carbon along the supply chain and among SME subcontractors.
lan Crowe MCIOB, procurement manager at Interserve Construction, said: “The large construction companies have got their heads around what they need to do but you take a step further down the chain – which is where most of carbon lies – and trying to get that information out of the subcontractor, well it’s not their first priority.”
Swapping site generators for permanent connections with utilities is an obvious way to cut emissions, but representatives of Interserve, ISG, Carillion and Mace bemoaned the lack of responsiveness in the utility sector that makes this harder than it need be.
