COP26: Let's tackle the climate emergency together!

COP26 is nearly upon us, bringing together parties to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The world is at a tipping point in the climate crisis caused by humanity and the buildings we inhabit. With the construction industry being responsible for around 40% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions, we need to move quickly and join forces to bring about meaningful climate change action. The time is now.

As building services engineers who have pioneered sustainable design for over 50 years, we’re especially concerned with the Built Environment aspect of COP26 and are pleased to have have had some involvement in this theme.

Katie Clemence-Jackson, Senior Engineer and Partner, played a role in bringing to life the Build Better Now Virtual Pavilion, an immersive virtual reality exhibition to discover international projects offering solutions to the climate crisis. This will be officially launched on 31st October. Katie also helped organise an event titled "Safe, sustainable & healthy: The relationship between building safety reform, sustainability and wellbeing", that considers how safe, human-centred and low carbon design principles can interact under the Building Safety Bill. It takes place on 9th November and registration for tickets is open.

In addition to our involvement in COP26 events, we’re continuing to tackle the climate emergency ourselves in many ways:

• we were the first building designers to have all of their offices verified as net zero carbon for operational energy in accordance with the UKGBC Net Zero Carbon Buildings Framework and are currently completing our updated verification
• we include a net zero carbon service at no additional fee on projects
• we are continuing to share our thoughts and opinions on our Net Zero Carbon Guide, a free and open resource to the industry, which provides step-by-step guidance to creating net zero carbon buildings

From Monday, the week leading up to COP26, we’ll share one resource each day to dive deeper into relevant conference programme points. As a round-up to each of the two conference weeks, we'll summarise the most relevant aspects for the industry in an opinion piece on our blog.

We're excited for COP26 - Let's tackle the climate emergency together!