Projects are falling short on climate ethics

Ever bid for a contract where the client says they want low carbon solutions but then goes for the cheapest bid anyway? Or suggested a way to reduce carbon emissions only to be told it’s not viable?

Apparently, you are not alone. Companies are committed to carbon reduction on paper but they’re not following through when it comes to decisions on letting contracts, selecting low carbon materials and technologies and pushing for more efficient designs.

These findings came from a series of roundtables held by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE). They got groups of asset owners and managers, designers, constructors and materials or product suppliers together to ask them about ethical dilemmas around climate change.

The idea was to look forward 10 years to think about what will be legally or morally unacceptable from a climate change perspective then. Here are some of the issues that all types of company – client, contractor, designer and supplier – said are causing them moral dilemmas today:

·       Overdesign due to time and liability potential

·       Not considering reuse and circularity

·       Low carbon materials not used due to legacy specifications and risk aversion

·       Lack of standardisation in carbon accounting and reporting

·       Contracts not including carbon reduction goals

·       Short-term financial returns prioritised over carbon benefits

At an event on 22 July to talk through the roundtable findings, IStructE’s head of climate change Will Arnold compared these climate-related issues to other issues in construction on which our ethical position has changed. For instance, poor health and safety practice or corruption and bribery were not illegal, nor considered immoral, in years gone by.

Lewis Barlow, who is an ICE trustee on carbon and climate and decarbonisation technical director at WSP, explained that anyone signed up to carbon management standard PAS2080 already had responsibilities to reduce carbon emissions when delivering projects, by challenging decisions and pushing for change. “They are mandated, so we ought to be doing all these things, but quite often they are not happening,” he said.

The ICE and the IStructE want to find ways to empower engineers to challenge decisions where they see their clients doing the wrong thing - from an ethical perspective. However, the institutions do acknowledge that this is clearly easier said than done; few companies are in a position to walk away from a contract.

These are certainly important issues for the industry to think about, discuss and hopefully act upon. Companies like Thermal Road Repairs won’t be able to continue investing time and money into developing low carbon technologies if their clients don’t see the value of making decisions based on what’s best for the climate – and for their investments in the future.

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Thermal Road Repairs: Road Repairs. Reinvented.

High output. Low emission. Zero waste. Permanent solution.

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Sources:

 https://www.ice.org.uk/events/recorded-lectures/ice-strategy-session-rethinking-engineering-ethics-climate-roundtables