It’s important to work with the client team to agree the lab furniture and necessary finishes, as there may be specific Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) requirements or chemical properties which can dictate the solution..
Hinkley Point is still a number of years off completion..Achieving net zero by 2050.
It’s also important to remember that the challenge of turning the climate crisis around rests solely on the shoulders of our working generation.Although future timescales can sometimes feel abstract, 2050 really isn’t far away and our net zero deadline is looming.In fact, half of the emissions in the atmosphere today were emitted in the last thirty years, so we’re going to have to think really expansively on the issue.
One of the greatest challenges we have is finance, because there’s still a lot of prejudice against nuclear power in the finance market.The World Bank, for example, won’t finance nuclear projects.
In addition, despite the fact that all of the science repeatedly tells us that nuclear is the lowest carbon, clean energy source available, the European sustainable finance taxonomy has remained in a state of consideration for years about whether nuclear energy actually qualifies as green..
Still, despite the challenges ahead, it’s clear to see that the tide is turning and, of course, urgency related to the climate crisis will only continue to increase.The built environment contributes to around 40% of the UK's total carbon footprint.
Based on UKGBC’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings “A framework definition", a typical Cat A office’s building embodied carbon, after the first year of use, would be 75% of the total carbon, whilst the operational carbon would be around 25%.Although the operational carbon will accumulate overtime, a decarbonised grid will mean that the growth rate will flatten, and after 60 years the embodied carbon will still remain higher than operational carbon, as shown in Figure 2.
This means that the focus and the priority should shift from operational to embodied carbon during the design..Embodied and operational carbon increase in a decarbonised grid scenario.