The UN’s Race to Zero is working – architects should join it

The United Nations COP26 climate conference in Glasgow next month is a staging post in the global green revolution.

The world we work in is changing faster than at any time since the industrial revolution with the transition to net zero over the next 15 years.

The pace of change is monumental. In June 2019 the UK government committed to net zero by 2050. In December 2020 it added pace to this by committing to a reduction in greenhouse gases by 68 per cent (from 1990 levels) by 2030. In April 2021 it ratcheted this up (with a wider scope), to 78 per cent by 2035. This week, it launched the Net Zero Strategy, and the Heat and Buildings Strategy, which detail how it plans to achieve these targets.

And it’s not just government. Since the UN launched its Race to Zero programme in July 2020, more than 160 firms, representing $70 trillion of assets, have signed up. In the UK these include half the FTSE, and major clients in the UK built environment sector including British Land, Land Securities, Grosvenor, Lendlease, Skanska, Willmott Dixon, Kier, Morgan Sindall, Aviva, Legal and General, Persimmon, Barratt, Redrow, Nationwide and thousands more.

This has triggered a domino effect. These organisations are requiring their supply chains to align with the Race to Zero target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030. As Grosvenor said last week: ‘We expect [our suppliers] to tackle their own emissions in line with best practice.’

The British government is doing the same, having recently announced that all tenderers for large public contracts must have, and publish, carbon reduction plans.

Leading architects such as AHMM, Make, Bennetts Associates, Gensler, dRMM have already showed great leadership by signing up too.

In many ways it’s a simple choice, to be part of the problem, or part of the solution. Architects Declare has decided to be part of the solution and will endorse a call to its signatories to join. It will be interesting to see where RIBA ends up on this.

Joining the Race to Zero is straightforward. The UN has designated partner organisations for firms to sign up with, including the Science Based Targets Initiative (mainly large firms), Business Declares (mid-size and committed organisations) and the SME Climate Hub.

Architects can make contact with these organisations and go through a four-step process:

• Pledge: to reduce carbon by at least 50 per cent by before 2030.
• Plan: A maximum of a year to work out how to do it.
• Proceed: Get on and start as soon as possible.
• Publish: the plan and then, probably annually, their progress against it, updating the plan as necessary.

Plans will be challenging. For most architects, this won’t mainly be about flying less or getting electric cars, important though those actions are. It will be about reducing the carbon required to build their clients’ buildings (Scope 3 emissions), and the carbon those buildings produce in use.

Architects will sign up to the UN Race to Zero for different reasons. For many it will be because protecting the planet for their children and grandchildren is the right thing to do. For others it will be risk management. Rapid change creates huge transition risks. Others will see opportunity. Retrofit is expected to be a £500 billion-plus market in the UK alone over the next 15 years or so.

For every architect, in the face of the biggest change to our business environment for two hundred years, signing up is good management and good business.

Chris Brown is the founder of Igloo Regeneration and a UK Built Environment Climate Ambassador