Low embodied carbon.
building sustainably hereThe difficulties in articulating and quantifying the essence of good design and its wider benefits to society have meant that design is often undervalued, both in the procurement of new development and in the planning decision-making process.As a result, large urban developments often fail to meet the aspirations of policymakers.
Architects have also been reluctant to focus conversations on the economic merits of their schemes, or the political issues behind them, instead focusing their descriptions and appraisals of work in mainly aesthetic terms.This has meant the discussion misses key challenges regarding what schemes are providing, or lacking, in terms of the economic and social value in architecture.. Part of the difficulty in embedding this design quality throughout the design process may be a result of the fragmentation of projects into stages, and the atomisation of roles in recent decades.Individuals are often responsible only for small chunks of the process and wider design, with little collaboration between parties.
It is therefore important to look at how to bridge these gaps across disciplines..The ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability.
In the early 1980s, the theorist Freer Spreckley first identified the concept that sustainable development could be realised through identifying and balancing environmental and social outcomes against economic benefits.
This ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability, as it is now known, underpins the corporate policy of organisations around the world.. To enable clarity on the desired outcomes of design, design value can be separated into a series of value types.But even though coal plants themselves are the largest single source of carbon, they can also act as flexible generators, complementing renewables in support of delivering reliable, affordable, and resilient electricity grids.
Installing advanced heat sources, such as small modular reactors (SMRs), to replace the coal-fired boilers at existing coal plants will enable the continued use of existing infrastructure for emissions-free electricity generation, providing substantial help with our decarbonisation efforts.. Repowering coal offers a fast, low-risk, large-scale contribution to decarbonising the world’s power generation..So, together with Terra Praxis, other specialists and key stakeholders, we are developing a solution that will contribute to creating a huge market for rapid, low-cost repowering of coal and gas plants with carbon-free advanced heat sources, while delivering a substantial portion of the clean electricity required to help achieve Net Zero by 2050.. 18.
The answer is nuclear.We are facing a climate crisis, and a rapidly closing window of opportunity in which to address it.