There are many important messages emerging from the current pandemic that will change the way we do business in the future.
Also, more evidence about the climate impacts of the use of wood for energy or building.
Taking Ownership of a Sustainable Future
The McKinsey Quarterly has published an insightful article on how we as leaders of the business world can benefit from the harsh lessons of the current pandemic. It notes that “When it comes to sustainability, despite genuine interest, many still suffer from collective inertia.” Building on the experiences of some the greatest leaders in the corporate sector, the article suggests one way that leaders can break this pattern is by asking a series of questions aimed at establishing concrete priorities for a sustainable future, Where is the company’s growth likely to come immediately after the crisis, as well as in the future? What new trends will affect the demand for our products and the supply of our raw materials? What do customers, employees, suppliers, and investors want from the business moving forward? These are critical issues for the cement, concrete and construction sectors as we enter a new world that demands more resilient buildings and infrastructure, faster and cheaper construction, and a more climate-conscious built environment. Read this great article here.
Achieving Climate Neutrality in the Cement and Concrete Industries by 2050.
Another forward-looking article on the post-pandemic future published by the European Cement Association sets out a Roadmap for climate neutrality in the cement and concrete industries by 2050. The Roadmap emphasizes a point the Building Resilience Coalition has repeatedly advocated that because of our changing climate, we all have to change. “Consumers will have to make new choices and change certain habits, governments at all levels will have to change regulation and industry will have to change the way products are made,” it notes. This very presentable Roadmap looks at every stage of the cement and concrete production and use and provides informative graphics and images that build on the theme that the cement industry is a local industry playing a global role for carbon neutrality and sustainability. Do look at this excellent overview of the factors that are shaping the future of our industry. Read more here.
Wood pellets from clear-cut, old-growth forests may not be carbon neutral
The Building Resilience Coalition has long voiced concerns, backed up by our own research, to counter the ‘Wood is Good’ mantra repeated so often in the popular press when discussing the climate-related impacts of building with wood, particularly with mass timber or engineered wood. A study published April 11 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Climatic Change looked at the emissions of harvesting and processing timber, the pellet manufacturing process, transportation to a power plant and combustion for fuel, and measured it against other elements such as carbon savings from coal, forest regrowth and wildfires. “The researchers found that clear-cutting undisturbed, or “primary” boreal forests for material to make wood pellets, in order to replace fossil fuels in electricity generation, is “unlikely to be useful in mitigating climate change in the near term” — and, in fact, would be likely to “exacerbate carbon dioxide emissions for many decades.” Read this informative article in the National Observer, and also the findings of our own research on the Building Resiliency Coalition website.
Sidewalk Labs pulls the plug on its Toronto Waterfront Smart City
Another breaking news article with wood building implications is an article in the Architects Newsletter reporting on the now-scrapped redevelopment vision for the Toronto lakefront that was heavy on timber construction. Admittedly, many factors prompted the project developers Sidewalk Labs, an organization funded by Google parent company Alphabet, to pull the plug on the project, including economic uncertainties and the prolonged approvals process. The ‘smart city’ project featured advanced digital monitoring that prompted some pushback on privacy concerns, but there were lingering concerns in some quarters over the density of highrise buildings constructed using engineered wood. Read the article here.
Want to learn more about the Building Resilience Coalition? Join our LinkedIn Group here.
Heads Up! Are you great at building bridges?
Building Resilience Coalition member the Portland Cement Association (PCA) and Roads & Bridges magazine are pleased to sponsor the 17th Concrete Bridge Awards Competition. The awards, instituted in 1988 and presented biennially, recognize excellence in design and construction of concrete bridges. Winning projects are selected by a jury of prominent bridge professionals based on creativity, functionality, aesthetics, sustainability, and economy in design and construction. Eligible structures for the 2020 competition must have been essentially completed between Oct. 2017 and Dec. 2019 and must be located within the United States. Read more here.
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The Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition is a gathering of organizations, primarily in the cement, concrete and masonry industries, committed to furthering the planning, development, and construction of buildings and associated infrastructure better able to recover from and to adapt to the growing impacts of an ever-changing urban and physical environment. Follow us at https://buildingresiliencecoalition.org/