Everything You Need To Know About the 2020 Carbon Pledge
It’s official. The planet is heating up thanks to man-made climate change caused by an abundance of carbon emissions.
A large portion of this in the UK comes from the construction industry, which uses a lot of materials that tend to produce waste.
However, this need not be the case and, as of this year, the UK government will make an official pledge to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions net-zero by 2050.
Here is what the pledge involves and how it will affect the construction industry as a whole in the years to come.
What It Involves
A lot of these changes are being implemented already. Coal-free records are being set every week and diesel/petrol cars are set to be phased out by 2040.
However, a lot of the changes will come from large structural changes that require a lot of new regulations and laws being put into place.
For instance, there will be a lot of greener alternatives put into force within certain industries like building and construction in order to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint.
Some industries will be trickier than others. The aviation and shipping industries, for example, are not so easily reduced, so in order to reach net zero, some carbon will have to be taken out of the air.
This can be done using natural means. Planting trees is the best solution to this and restoring natural carbon sinks such as peatlands.
Even so, while the 2050 net-zero carbon pledge is achievable, it won’t be easy and real changes will need to be implemented in order to be successful.
How It Will Affect the Construction Industry
Doubtlessly, this new carbon pledge will cause a large disruption to the construction industry. This industry alone produces 33% of the UK’s total carbon emissions.
Having said that, it has reduced dramatically from the 1990s, in which it was over 50% more than it currently is now.
There’s still room for improvement, however. More and more companies are turning to greener methods of construction and it’s already having an impact.
Such methods including resorting to investing in modular/prefabricated structures, methods which have been known to significantly reduce carbon emissions.
Waste reduction gets cut down to around 90% alone and that’s just by having the materials needed to be made on-site.
What You Can Do
If you’re in charge of a construction firm or plan on investing in a large construction project, you should strongly consider changing the way your company operates to incorporate greener elements.
Modular construction and prefabricated buildings are a strong stepping stone into reducing your carbon footprint.
In case you find that hard to believe, the tallest skyscraper in a Chinese city was made entirely from modular constructions.
As well as significantly reducing the number of carbon emissions this could have taken to construct, it took only 19 days to complete.
There are plenty of other elements besides, but prefabricated buildings are primarily the best thing to resort to as a method of green construction.
There are also many other things you can. For instance, it would be wise to do as much research into sustainable construction methods as possible as well as what regulations you will need to abide by.
That way the transition into reducing carbon emissions will become much easier and much more successful, not just for your business but for the world overall.
Go Green with Quickway
Tackle your greenhouse gas emissions by signing onto the climate pledge and investing in modular construction.
At Quickway, our prefabricated steel frame structures are a great way of tackling the climate crisis with fewer resources used and less waste produced.
Visit our building specifications today to see how we accomplish this and why not contact us for a quote!