By 2050 more than two in every three people will live in urban areas, an increase from more than 57 per cent today. While cities are the engines of global economic growth, this continued urban migration brings considerable challenges including overcrowding, pollution, and stress on vital resources such as water.  

Climate change adds an extra layer of complexity for cities planning the as-yet-unbuilt infrastructure needed to cope with this continued mass migration. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued the starkest of warnings: if global warming is to be contained within manageable parameters, more must be done urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

In the context of urbanisation, this demands climate-resilient development that allows cities to build infrastructure now that will be sufficiently adaptable to the changing environment to serve their communities for decades to come.   

Financial resources to support cities’ ambitions are available from agencies such as The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), World Bank and African Development Bank.  

The trick is accessing and deploying them – at pace.  

From vision to implementation

Cities need to understand the scale of the challenges and opportunities – what is needed, where, and how to maximise the impact – and they need to be able to articulate those priorities in a way that resonates with available funding. In addition, they need to keep their stakeholders and communities with them on that journey. 

Building a clear picture of city requirements and priorities requires capacity, time and specialist expertise. Many mayors and city officials are interested in creating climate action plans but struggle to create the time, drive the process, and access the data to develop practical and evidence-based climate action plans.  

Having supported cities across the world in driving urban development on more sustainable pathways, AECOM has the tools and capabilities to work with cities to help them achieve their goals across three broad stages of the process and to deploy key lessons learned elsewhere.  

1/ In the first instance, each city needs to develop a clear vision of what is critical and essential for its development. For some this could be as broad as achieving net zero carbon emissions as new infrastructure is built for a growing population. For others, it might include addressing certain pollution issues or building resilience against a particular vulnerability such as flood, fire or drought. Bringing citizens and stakeholders along on this visioning process is critical.   

2/ With that vision articulated, cities need to have a clear understanding of the financing environment that can support and build a case for investment.  

3/ The last phase of this process is the development of an action plan that can move a city towards funding and implementation.  

Developing capacity and planning action

Financing institutions (such as the EBRD, World Bank and Asian Development Bank) have their own frameworks and methodologies to assess and prioritise investment. They often support the action planning process using evidence-based tools to help institutions and cities to work together to mutual advantage. Those tools enable cities to apply a laser focus to what’s critical in their programmes while making it easier for international financial institutions to lend their support by developing an understanding of climate risks and how to prioritise projects.

The EBRD, for example, employs two key tools, Green City Action Plans and Green Financing Roadmaps, in its €2 billion Green Cities Program, which aims to improve the physical environment, mitigate climate change and improve residents’ well-being. AECOM has worked with the EBRD across eastern European and central Asian cities where the climate threat is acute.

Green City Action Plans assess and prioritise environmental challenges and develop a path for tackling them through policy and sustainable infrastructure investments. Within this process, AECOM and its partners provide expertise and tools to develop the plan and help to build the resources and capabilities a city needs to address its climate priorities, particularly as it moves towards the implementation of these actions.

The Green Financing Roadmap is an additional tool, aimed at mobilising a more diverse set of finance options for projects in cities that have completed action plans. AECOM worked, for example, with Albania’s capital Tirana to improve the green finance readiness of the city government and prepare nine high-priority green investment projects.

In countries that are poorly served by resources needed to plan and execute climate-resilient infrastructure, such as a lack of data or enough expertise on the ground, a different approach may be required. AECOM has recently worked with the African Development Bank, for example, to design a methodology that enables cities to accelerate the information gathering and analysis phase to allow them to move quickly to action.

Speed is critical

Time is of the essence in the battle against climate change, and so the development and sharing of best practice and expertise across continents and projects is important. What works in one city might not be the best response to the challenges of the next, but the application of a shared methodology or experience could be critical in accelerating action. 

With cities responsible for more than 70 per cent of global emissions, they are on the front line of the need to find sustainable development solutions. Moving swiftly from planning to action to implementation is critical, and AECOM is ready to support each step.  

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Below are just a few of the highlights from the report which shows how we are providing truly sustainable solutions for our clients informed by decades of experience, industry-leading ESG expertise and, above all, a drive to do good and be good.

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Progressed toward our goal of science-based net zero by 2040, a target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)

We reached operational net zero in fiscal 2021, while reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions which cover fleet and office energy, respectively, by 47 percent from our full year 2018 baseline year, using key travel and real estate initiatives. In accordance with the new and even more rigorous SBTi net zero standard, we have also set an updated 2040 net zero target which emphasizes decarbonization over offsets. This ambitious target places us among the forefront of companies globally.

Launched our ESG Advisory Services, supported by decades of expertise

One of our signature milestones this year has been the launch of our ESG Advisory practice, which deploys our depth of expertise to navigate our clients through this rapidly evolving space and realize their ambitious visions. Working with organizations at the forefront of the green transition globally, including the United Kingdom’s Network Rail and Airport Authority Hong Kong, our Advisory Services are mitigating risk, building trust and improving long-term outcomes worldwide.

Advanced ScopeX initiatives to accelerate our ESG offering for clients and cut carbon in our work

ScopeX is a core offering of our ESG services and will be one of our greatest contributions to tackling the climate crisis. By accounting for materials, site locations, logistics and construction methods, it will help reduce and eliminate the impact of projects on the natural environment. With ScopeX, we aim to reduce the carbon impact of major projects by at least 50 percent.

Acted on equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) by addressing equity challenges globally and regionally

We continue to make progress towards greater equity, diversity and inclusion. We’re nearing our target for women to compose 35 percent of our workforce, with women in 18 percent of leadership roles and making up 33 percent of our overall workforce. We have also fostered a culture of inclusivity that has been recognized by organizations like the Human Rights Campaign— which has named us a Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality in the United States. Our ED&I commitments efforts extend to the communities we serve, where we’ve implemented locally relevant workplace diversity and pay equity goals.

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Beyond a commitment

In just one year, we’ve made objective progress on our targets and have set even more stringent ones so that we can lead for our clients and our people. But what can’t be quantified is our sense of purpose.

For us, ESG is so much more than a commitment—it’s something we see every day in our work, where its impact is truly felt. I invite you to see that impact for yourself in this year’s report and explore each of our accomplishments as we continue to deliver Sustainable Legacies worldwide.

Read the report

The post Our 2022 ESG Report: a year of Sustainable Legacies appeared first on Without Limits.

Around 70 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are associated with infrastructure projects. With such an opportunity for impact, it’s essential that we continually examine our processes and actions to enable effective decision-making and continuous learning.  

Cost intelligence is linking available datasets together, using the most applicable analytics techniques, and leveraging specialist knowledge to provide context to outputs. By understanding aspects like digital capability, construction processes, project delivery and data management, we improve a project’s governance, value for money and efficiency, and enable better business planning.  

Over time, these inputs will change, so cost and carbon intelligence act as a learning system that will evolve and improve, helping us analyse the right information in the right format to understand the complex problems we are trying to solve. 

Where does carbon fit in? 

Cost has always been a driving measure behind organisational decision-making, but with pressure rising to create broad, meaningful outcomes across infrastructure projects, we need to expand our analysis. Like cost, carbon can be measured to help us make intelligent decisions around carbon.  

There is a carbon ‘cost’ for every resource consumed – the exchange we pay in carbon for consuming a resource. Carbon, like cost, is a currency of resource consumption and should be measured and tracked over the lifespan of a project. After all, what gets measured, gets managed. 

As we transition to this more holistic analysis approach, the integrity of our data sets will determine our success. Data granularity and transparency across organisations are key to understanding cost and carbon use, and moving toward highly collaborative delivery models will deliver more intelligent projects.  

However, carbon is only one measure, and we must analyse the value of other environmental and social impacts to make an intelligent decision that serves the environment, community, and business needs. In Australia, as more states explore water solutions like recycled water and desalination plants, a cross-section of analysis will be integral to achieving a good carbon outcome as well as social and environmental benefits.  

The methodology 

Data analysis to inform decision-making is not a new concept, but success lies in how the data is analysed. At AECOM, Cost and Carbon Intelligence brings together over 30 specialists across multiple disciplines, including data analysts, cost managers and business analysts, alongside sector specialists.  

From data to action
Consider a scenario where we film the entire construction process across all major construction sites. We use machine learning to generate scheduling, productivity, and waste data points. This creates a vast dataset for each project, which can be used in many ways, such as predicting the outcome of future projects or removing waste activities from a process. However, without understanding the project objectives and various key performance indicators, these datasets lose their meaning.  

But if we integrate specialist knowledge, broader industry trends, and carbon and cost modelling with analytics techniques, we can organise our information and visualise the outputs. Organisations are then empowered to make effective decisions and achieve intelligent outcomes by creating digestible and actionable information. 

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The urgent need to lower global carbon emissions is driving innovation, investment and policy support to decarbonise the energy and transport sectors, with green hydrogen touted as a vital part of the puzzle. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 26 countries now have national hydrogen strategies, up from 15 in 2021. These strategies typically set deployment targets and public investment commitments, providing conditions for further investment in the hydrogen sector.

A versatile energy carrier with many potential applications, hydrogen has the potential to play a significant role in the energy transition. Hydrogen is a zero-emission energy carrier that can be used to store, transport and export renewable energy when produced using renewable energy via electrolysis. Potential applications for hydrogen include heavy transportation, heating and chemical input for industrial processes and integration into the electricity grid through ancillary services. Hydrogen can also be used to export renewable energy in the form of liquid hydrogen, ammonia or other hydrogen-dense media.

While the jury may still be out on the ultimate significance of hydrogen’s role in our future energy mix, there is no doubt that hydrogen will play a part in our transition to a lower carbon economy. The International Energy Agency estimated that annual global hydrogen demand could increase from ~11 EJ in 2021 to ~63 EJ by 2050 (in the net zero by 2050 scenario).

Water for hydrogen

Large-scale green hydrogen production via electrolysis is highly water intensive. The electrolysis process, which uses electricity and catalysts to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, requires approximately 9 kg of water for each kilogram of hydrogen produced (on a purely stoichiometric basis). Depending on the type of electrolyser used and the intended end use of the hydrogen, this water usually needs to be of very high purity – demineralised and deionised.

Additional water is required in the production process to support the balance of plant and electrolyser operations, primarily for cooling purposes. Depending on the quality of the water feedstock, the required hydrogen specifications, and the balance of plant requirements, this water usage can be material, adding anywhere between 10 kg to 65 kg of water per kg of hydrogen produced, bringing the total water requirement to ~20 kg to 75 kg (per kilogram of hydrogen produced). While these requirements are material, there is some good news. The balance of plant water can be lower quality than that used in the electrolysis process, some of it may be recovered and recycled in the process, and, in some applications, air cooling can be substituted for water cooling.

Water availability and ramping up hydrogen production

The Australian hydrogen industry is still in its infancy; however, there are many proposals to develop hydrogen ‘hubs’ that will co-locate production facilities alongside large industrial users and export facilities. There are also several existing small-scale pilot plants located in industrial estates close to urban centres.

There are currently almost 100 proposed projects aiming to produce approximately 4.4 million tonnes of green hydrogen per annum in Australia for both domestic consumption and export. Given that each kilogram of hydrogen production requires ~ 20-75 kg of water, the total water requirement would be ~88 – 330 GL per annum if all these projects were to materialise. For comparison, in 2019-20, a total of 14,270 GL of water was consumed in Australia, with 67% allocated to agriculture, 22% to urban use and 11% (1570 GL) to industry.

The World Energy Council (WEC) estimates that the average water footprints for primary energy production of oil, natural gas, and coal are, respectively, 121 (based on conventional oil production and refining), 109 and 164 GL/EJ. It’s worth noting that estimates for oil vary significantly due to the assumed production method, with unconventional methods being significantly more water-intensive. With current green hydrogen production methods, we estimate the water footprint to vary in the range of 170 – 625 GL/EJ (based on the lower heating value for hydrogen), depending on several factors, including the input water quality, cooling requirements and methods, and the hydrogen production technology employed.

The Australian water challenge

Australia is facing significant water availability challenges, including managing environmental flows, meeting agricultural demands, servicing industry needs and accommodating urban growth. This delicate balancing act aims to meet societal demands for water whilst ensuring enough for the environment. This has led to the development of some of the world’s most innovative and progressive water management plans and strategies. While Australia is considered a global leader in the management of water resources, both at a regional and a metropolitan scale, hydrogen production is yet to feature in these plans as a significant demand. This disconnect between the energy and water sectors becomes more apparent when reviewing their respective long-term plans.

Limitations to the growth of the hydrogen industry

Theoretically, sourcing water for green hydrogen production shouldn’t limit national ambitions to decarbonise the economy because we can implement strategies to meet this demand, including desalination and treated wastewater. However, additional investment and energy consumption are required to support extra water processing requirements. At the local scale, hydrogen production for a future energy demand scenario could directly compete with other water users. Limitations on water availability caused by supply or water infrastructure constraints in some locations may also limit the growth potential of the hydrogen industry. This is particularly relevant to the existing and proposed hydrogen facilities in urban or industrial settings.

Moving forward

The emergence of a green hydrogen energy industry in Australia is an exciting prospect and a tangible demonstration of our national commitment to a significant global challenge. The energy and water sectors must work together to expedite this transition.

For the water sector, this means understanding the national hydrogen ambition and determining what that means locally, considering the current and future water cycle, environmental needs, water use and water supply assets. Once all the constraints and opportunities have been determined, organisational commitments should also be embedded in the relevant plans and strategies that aspire to protect the water cycle.

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If the world is to solve the existential crisis that is climate change, it is essential that every voice is understood, heard and considered as political leaders at COP27 seek to find solutions to turn the tide.

It’s encouraging that COP meetings are among the most diverse and representative events you could attend. Tens of thousands of people from every nation, representing government, industry, NGOs and interest groups are gathered to debate and negotiate. Yet one key group, a constituency with more at stake than most in this battle for the future, is too often under-represented and unheard: the world’s youth.

My mission in Sharm El-Sheikh is to find ways to connect the voice of youth with the world’s policymakers and to ensure we are able to bring our expertise and passion to the cause. In addition, I am advocating the role that innovation in infrastructure and the built environment can play in fighting climate, an area in which AECOM can bring its skills and experience to bear.

It was a privilege to help convene a meeting of policymakers and youth leaders in COP27’s Blue Zone, supported by the Commonwealth Secretariat, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations and the International Federation of Consulting Engineers. The panel focused on how the expertise of young people could be harnessed to bridge the divide between science and policy in the climate arena.

Prior to the discussion and COP27 I shared the preliminary findings of a survey of youth and policymakers which found a range of barriers to effective engagement. Young people said that a lack of transparency and consultation in policymaking and a scarcity of paid opportunities, structured engagement and finance were among reasons for disengagement. Policymakers cited time pressure as a barrier but insisted there were benefits to engagement with young people and that widespread consultation was already a key part of the process.

The panel was unanimous in its view that young people needed to be more involved in COP process, and Dr Andrea Clayton, of the Caribbean Maritime University in Jamaica, made an eloquent case for its importance: “More than half of the world’s population is young people yet we are not included in decision-making and the political process. And we talk about climate change and its impact as if it’s something in the future, when young people are now watching their future disappearing.”

The panel advocated a number of key actions that could be taken including the inclusion of more young people in COP delegations as active participants. This would also accelerate the learning process of those who will be the climate negotiators of the future. In addition, it was broadly agreed that improved and simpler access to finance for young entrepreneurs would be beneficial.

I strongly believe that young engineers and scientists can play a key role in bridging the divide between science and policy, and I am grateful for the support of AECOM in working towards this. We are the implementers and the innovators aiming to develop and execute solutions to current and future climate impact, and our bottom-up approach should meet top-down policymaking to accelerate the world’s response to climate change.

In Egypt I can see that some progress has been made, and I will continue to work hard to drive this agenda forward.

The panel discussion, an official COP27 side event, was moderated by Danae Kyriakopoulou of the LSE, and I appeared alongside the Hon. Amira Saber, Parliament Member and Secretary General of the Foreign Relations Committee in Egypt; Stephen De Boer, Assistant Deputy Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, Canada; Cedric Frolick, Member of the National Assembly, South Africa; Dr Andrea Clayton from the Caribbean Maritime University in Jamaica; Nikita Shiel-Rolle, founder of the Young Marine Explorers in the Bahamas and Sarabeth Brockley of Nasdaq in the US.

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Whether you are transforming cities in developed or emerging markets, the opportunities offered by green finance are enormous. Of course, the scale of today’s environmental challenges are huge too, meaning there is an urgent need to shift focus from ideas and plans to implementation and action.

COP26 in Glasgow last year highlighted just how important this decade will be for change, and the good news is private green finance is increasingly available from investors to achieve this. In Asia-Pacific alone, for example, the investment opportunity is estimated to be $1.4 trillion. Additionally, institutions such as British International Investment, the International Finance Corporation, and UK Infrastructure Bank are looking to provide catalytic funds to support green investment and make it attractive to more private investors.

Across the globe, prioritising smarter, cleaner, and greener cities has become policy for national governments, regional leaders, and local authorities. They’re all now outlining projects large and small, as well as looking towards stronger legislation and ESG commitments. This has meant the key question we are now asked by cities is: “How do we access more green finance?”.

Risks, actions, outcomes

Accessing green finance involves understanding risks, prioritising actions, and measuring outcomes.

For instance, the dramatic environmental shifts we are seeing due to climate change have accelerated the need for work on mitigation, but less focus is currently being placed on the importance of adaptation measures. Adaptation includes nature-based solutions to help cities handle extreme rain and storm events, coastal protection interventions, and also smart design to reduce urban heat island effects.  However, as this is an area with a significant financing gap, there is a critical need to invest in these measures, as well as continuing to fund mitigation.

Here, what is required is an improved understanding of what’s at risk. Knowing this is critical to designing the right intervention. At AECOM, we train financial institutions to understand climate risks and how to assess and prioritise climate projects, as well as how to support public-private partnerships to deliver truly sustainable infrastructure.

City leaders have a key role too. They must fully grasp what risks their citizens and infrastructure systems face, and better identify cost-effective improvements. To be credible, they must be able to articulate and monitor what tangible benefits these investments will deliver. Without this, many projects will never leave the drawing board.

Financial institutions willing to provide green finance want to be clear on the exact aims and solutions of city measures, whether that’s tackling extreme summer heat, fires and drought, or the winter flooding that causes damage to infrastructure and disruption to the water supply. The long-term returns also need to be clearly outlined along with data to show investments will be safeguarded, with money spent wisely to achieve the biggest positive impacts.

Evidence-based tools like EBRD’s Green City Action Plans and Green Financing Roadmaps help both sides navigate this journey together. In Tirana, Albania, a recent Green Financing Roadmap focused on nine priority areas to increase the readiness of the city’s key green projects as well as strengthening the capacity of municipal staff around green finance.

Investing in the future

Beyond capital cities like Tirana, there is an increasing realisation that secondary cities across the world, from Turkey to Kenya to India, will be critical growth centres of the future. This presents an opportunity to get ahead of the curve by embedding climate change mitigation and adaptation measures from the start. In Kenya, we are supporting the World Bank to embed climate resilience in urban planning practices and infrastructure investments across secondary cities.

Longer-term and more radical solutions are also needed. Nature-based solutions to climate change can replace traditional grey infrastructure systems and deliver the same urban resilience objectives while enriching biodiversity and delivering multiple additional benefits cross air and water quality, urban heating, public health, noise, amenity. liability and land value. Convincing decision-makers in cities to consider these alternative solutions requires measuring and quantifying their outcomes and longer-term economic returns even more important.

Smart tools and approaches – such as those being tested in our Natural Capital Laboratory in Scotland – can quantify the benefits of nature and this intelligence can be integrated into investment decisions

Smart solutions for fairer cities

Smart cities will grow out of a multitude of data streams, analysed by artificial intelligence and machine learning in real time. So, at all phases of development, such data must identify and prioritise green improvements ready for investment.

People-focused green investments are critical too, particularly around climate justice for poorer areas and communities so often on the frontline of climate disasters.

In the US, for example, the city of Baltimore is embracing an equity-based business process to address historical imbalances within the city. Technology is an enabler and facilitator, with data defining areas of need and intervention. It also empowers officials and citizens to make the right decisions toward desired outcomes.

An opportunity to thrive

The UK will need to leverage green finance to create liveable, thriving, and smart cities of the future. Green finance is available, but regional authorities and councils need a greater understanding of where this money is available – and how to access it. New institutions such as the UK Infrastructure Bank are coming online with significant ambitions and £22bn in infrastructure finance.

The need to invest in climate-positive resilient infrastructure is enormous. But city governments – both in the UK and globally – are not alone. Finance institutions and private investors are ready to scale-up green finance for well-prepared climate projects.

It’s now time to take seriously the crises we are currently facing, linking post-coronavirus recovery, cost of living measures, and our climate change goals into a sustainable development agenda.

A version of this article appeared in the Smart Cities report, a supplement published in The Times newspaper, August 2022. Click here to read the full report.

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Water utilities account for about two percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, equivalent to the world’s shipping industry. While the need to decarbonize has never been more crucial, at the same time the world’s growing population needs more water – and not just for drinking. For sanitation, cleanliness, food production and the removal of waste products, the demands on supply are ever growing.

A small number of leading global water utilities and stakeholders have set net-zero and climate neutrality targets to mitigate their emissions, but many are still in the process of working out how to achieve these. Other operators have yet to commit to formal targets – and many of these are in Asia.

Emissions from water

The increased demand on water supply is being accelerated in Asia as more people move to urban areas, becoming dependent on industrial supplies of food and sanitation. It is estimated that by 2050, the 9.7 billion people on our planet will need 45 percent more food and 55 percent more water.

However, the delivery and treatment of water and wastewater require a great deal of energy, resulting in large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as fugitive and flared emission of CH₄ (methane) and N₂O (nitrous oxide). The key processes – such as treating water to a potable standard, treating wastewater to a standard appropriate for discharge, pumping water around the supply network and pumping wastewater around the sewer network – contribute direct emissions such as the release of CH₄ and N₂O from the treatment process, as well as indirect emissions from its grid electricity use.

In order to meet growing water demands, the upgrading of existing water networks and creation of new facilities will be needed.

Taking steps towards net-zero

As one of the world’s most rapidly urbanizing regions, water scarcity is a major issue for Asia. How it responds could have a major impact on the climate crisis. Currently the lack of funding and innovation has hindered many regional water utility operators from making progress on their net-zero journeys, while some have yet to start. This needs to change.

According to a 2022 report by CDP, a non-profit organization that runs the global environmental disclosure system for companies, cities, states and regions, 3,879 companies from 21 markets across the Asia Pacific region disclosed their emissions, targets and climate action through CDP’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)-aligned Climate Change questionnaire, representing 14 percent of global market capitalization and a 29 percent increase from the previous year. However, out of those companies, just 291 companies (8 percent) reported having net-zero targets in place and a majority were set to 2050 or beyond.

In order to be part of the net-zero conversation, water operators and businesses in Asia will need to make transformations to their existing processes if they are to lower their emissions. Whether it’s through reducing the energy intensity of its processes, adding renewable supplies or embracing the circular economy, there are a variety of measures that early stakeholders of the net zero water journey have found some levels of success with, particularly in the following four key areas:

1/ Operational improvements for carbon redirection and the circular economy: During the water treatment process, biproducts, which have previously been regarded as waste, is generated but rather than simply disposing them, they can be treated as secondary raw materials to be recycled and reuse. Recovered products can be used as clean water for irrigation and cleaning, nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer for farmers, as well as for heat energy and electricity.

2/ Make changes to water processes: Initiate innovative biosolid programs such as thermal hydrolysis, anaerobic digestion and combined heat power process which help to reduce energy consumption. In Hong Kong, YLEPP is the first wastewater treatment plant in the city to adopt the advanced treatment technology of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) for biological treatment. Not only is the AGS technology highly efficient, it also demands less energy than traditional processes due to the reduced use of mechanical equipment, such as mixers and recycle pumps.

3/ Switch to zero carbon energy sources: Build renewable energy sources such as hydropower generators and solar panels into facilities to power processes with less emissions. An alternative would be directly purchasing renewable energy sources from providers. Singapore’s Keppel Marina East Desalination Plant is an innovative large-scale desalination facility capable of treating 137,000 cubic meters of water per day that optimizes energy usage through implementation of techniques including direct coupling, energy recovery devices and permeate split.

4/ Embracing digitalization: Equipped with high quality data collected by sensors, water operators will have a better understanding what’s happening currently in their processes and aid in setting different target benchmarks to begin implementing new decarbonization innovation. The information can also be used to develop new equipment to improve energy consumption and optimization.

When it comes to tackling carbon emissions, there is no one-size-fits-all solution as each operator faces its own particular situations and challenges. They will need to do a thorough assessment of their operations and carbon targets to begin their decarbonization conversation. As the water industry works to meet the ambitious goal of net zero by 2030, it will be aided by an evolving ecosystem of technology and innovation to drive the decarbonization transformation to provide the essential resource to communities while doing less harm to the environment.

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The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has sounded the alarm: “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”  

The IPCC scenario assessment demonstrates that limiting warming to less than 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak between 2020 and 2025 at the latest and be reduced by at least 43 percent by 2030. Without radical proactive action, we will not achieve this.  

As a key contributor of carbon emissions, the building industry must respond. We need to build flexible, carbon-positive buildings and infrastructure while simultaneously upgrading and adapting our existing assets to drive down our carbon footprint.  

Without change, the buildings of yesteryear will not thrive in a net zero society and may become ‘stranded assets’ – one of the biggest challenges facing the property and infrastructure sector today. These buildings will continue to negatively impact our ability to meet carbon targets, and running costs will surge. We must act now to prevent these assets from becoming less desirable to future users and tenants, and less valuable to investors – essentially ‘stranded’.  

The transition to renewable energy is often seen as a silver bullet for carbon elimination. However, to achieve the targets set out in the Paris Agreement, which aim to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, we need to consider an asset’s whole operational life. Reducing operational emissions requires a multifaceted approach, driving carbon elimination across energy, waste, fuel, refrigerants, water and wastewater, and transport. 

Refitting for resilience 

An asset that achieves highly sustainable outcomes today may underperform against sustainability principles of the future. For our assets to remain valuable and relevant in a net zero society, we must rethink the design of new buildings and places and how we upgrade existing building stock to serve our changing environmental and societal needs. 

Let’s explore how action to eliminate operational carbon. Five key areas can drastically change a building’s resiliency and impact the level of associated risk for owners and investors.  

Operational carbon action: compare the pair 
Our asset owners, Fred and Yasmin, are making choices today that will impact each building’s carbon emissions and value in the future. Explore the scenarios below:        

Why policy must become Australia’s first line of climate defence 

Policy and incentivisation play an integral role in education, equity, and mobilisation, and will be vital to quickly achieving carbon targets. History tells us that policy works – addressing knowledge gaps and driving widespread change throughout communities.  

Governments across the globe are using policy to shape climate resilience: 

• In Canada, the federal government has implemented a carbon pollution pricing system and a 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan.  

• The UK government has introduced a policy to stop the sale of internal combustion engine cars by 2030.  
• Through its Heat and Building Strategy, the UK has also introduced a £450 million (US$548 million) Boiler Upgrade Scheme to help existing small domestic buildings transition to low carbon heating systems.  

In Australia, policies like these are yet to be taken up at a national level. Timeliness is crucial. If the industry waits until policy demands change, we will see a delayed impact in reducing our emissions. We are also likely to see the effect of rapid decision-making. Industry will be forced to adapt quickly, which could create capability gaps, including a lack of training to enable skilled employees to transition out of fossil fuel industries, a lack of readiness in the supply chain to respond to demand, and a lack of supporting infrastructure.  

In 2021, Australia ranked number one in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark results, we were a world leader in sustainable buildings. However, while we might outperform many countries in the built environment, this reflects the top of the market – our most privileged, most incentivised, and most able to act now.  

Initiatives need to be driven by bottom-up and top-down approaches. Private developers have put Australia at the forefront of sustainability indexes for the built environment globally, rather than national policy.

To meet standards set out in the Paris Agreement, we need national policies that incentivise change and increase the equity and accessibility of operational carbon asset upgrades for small to medium businesses and investors. Without support, how can asset owners like Fred contribute positively and thrive in a net zero society?

The truth is, it’s crunch time. Our government must align national policies to IPCC recommendations to help decarbonise the built environment across all sectors. With the proper support, we can design and upgrade our buildings and communities to create climate-resilient assets that serve our planet and community.

Eliminating operational carbon is not just good business sense; it’s critical for a liveable future.

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With public and private sector bodies acting to limit the impacts of climate change, public participation is increasingly being sought on long term sustainability projects. But how do you empower someone to comment on a national flood resilience strategy, for example? Likewise, how do you make the information contained within an ecological report readily available to a person with limited prior knowledge of the subject? These demands are compelling environmental consultants to take an increasingly creative approach to stakeholder engagement.

As technical advisors on strategic programmes, it is our role to assess challenges and opportunities based on the best available technical data and stakeholder inputs to then scope and design potential approaches and solutions. Stakeholder engagement – the process of informing, engaging and consulting the public to inform decision-making – on long-term sustainability strategies or projects that take years to come to fruition has a different set of challenges to consulting on a bridge, railway or new building. For example, consultations on city-wide environmental strategies have to make abstract concepts (such as net zero or resilience) real and relevant to local citizens. In other instances, it’s about the wider dissemination of complex information and ideas that might otherwise be confined to niche technical fields, such as natural capital, into accessible formats that allow the public to meaningfully engage with the project.

In addition, the climate and biodiversity crises have complex drivers and outcomes, and the projects created to address them can encompass complex spatial scales. These projects must be effective at both strategic and local implementation levels, so engagement with affected communities is critically important. However, human behaviour is such that people tend to be more interested in schemes that directly affect them. It is common for projects that address the impacts of a changing climate to face the challenge of communicating the wider benefits both in and beyond the local area.

In this article, we look at three challenges when engaging with the public on long term sustainability projects – building ownership and trust, communicating long-term visions, and considering digital literacy – using examples from our work in Europe and the Middle East.

Building ownership and trust

If local communities are not properly consulted on schemes of strategic importance, then public trust can be easily eroded. Engagement campaigns must build effective communication pathways to both present wider benefits and provide a space for public opinion to influence decision-making.

A well-thought-out communication campaign will build trust and strengthen relationships between all parties. In the city of Amman, Jordan, the Greater Amman Municipality has been consulting with the public on key sustainability issues to help develop priority actions for its Green City Action Plan (GCAP). As well as conducting a digital campaign in both Arabic and English, our project team worked closely with local sub-consultants, Leaders of Tomorrow, to access a network of community leaders to engage those harder-to-reach sections of the community, in this project commissioned by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Building ownership and trust also involves making technical information accessible and relatable. We set up an online workshop with community members and local government officials to discuss the key sustainability issues that had been raised throughout the engagement programme. The workshop utilised innovative role-playing exercises which helped us to explore each party’s perspective, contextualise complex issues, challenge assumptions. The workshop also provided a direct line of communication between the community and the Greater Amman Municipality and helped create a sense of ownership to this critical city-wide strategy. Repeating these exercises beyond the consultation phase can further strengthen relationships and trust.

Communicating long-term visions

It can be difficult to engage members of the public on strategic projects that focus on long-term visions without a tangible outcome. In the case of a rewilding project for instance, a forested area can take decades to establish, so it can be hard for people to envisage what it will eventually look like – or appreciate its future value.

Natural capital is a field of environmental economics which relies heavily on environmental data and valuation literature and the results are often presented in long reports and spreadsheets. At the Natural Capital Laboratory (NCL) – a rewilding project in the Scottish Highlands – we are translating all this information in a creative, easy to access and visual manner with our digital platform. The platform harnesses 3D maps to make the site easier to explore by giving viewers a novel perspective on both the area and the related data so that they can appreciate the mosaic of habitats on one screen. The goal is to help users understand the benefits nature provides, how nature changes over time and why certain land use decisions are made. Once armed with this information, we hope that people will feel more empowered to engage with the project as it evolves.

Even with the use of these industry-leading digital tools, the audience comprises largely of those local to the project or with an interest in rewilding. So, we have also used virtual reality to create a tangible, visual and acoustic experience to demonstrate how rewilding might change the landscape in the future. The use of virtual reality is helping us to further promote this essential work to a new audience: for example, the NCL virtual reality experience was a featured project in the UK Green Building Council’s virtual pavilion during COP26.

The same challenges apply to city-wide strategies. In Amman, we wanted people to share their vision for a green city, so we used emotive personal subjects to engage citizens in thinking about how they wanted the local government to address environmental issues. We set up a social media campaign to encourage residents to share their own green actions as well as community project success stories. These prompts sparked debate and critical thinking across online platforms helping the public to not only engage in these complex issues but at the same time indirectly share their concerns and priorities for the city.

Considering digital literacy and the digital divide

The global pandemic has accelerated the trend towards virtual platforms and digital engagement tools, which have had a transformational effect when used on traditional infrastructure projects. At AECOM, we have been expanding and evolving these tools to meet the particular challenges of engaging the public on complex sustainability projects and using them to unpick technical information into a more engaging format through PlanEngage by Digital AECOM, a platform that uses interactive mapping and video.

However, moving engagement online risks isolating certain demographics of a population, who may not have access to the internet or may not be digitally literate. In Amman for example, where most of the activities were online due to the pandemic, the vast majority of engagement fell between two age categories, 18-34 and 35-54.

The project team considered ways in which they could reach a wider audience, in particular those that the digital campaign did not reach. The team chose a local artist to create a mural depicting the campaign’s vision for a green Amman in a central area of the city in the hope that it would spark debate and conversation. The design incorporated many of the key concerns and aspirations expressed by city residents throughout earlier stages of the campaign. This hybrid approach helped increase the reach of the campaign beyond the digital audience and provided a novel way of engaging sections of the public who did not typically think about or discuss environmental issues.

Empowering communities in the decision-making process

Without meaningful public engagement, there is a danger that sustainability strategies and projects will act as an echo chamber for technical experts, neglecting the communities that these projects serve and reducing potential for change.

Arguably the first step in persuading a person to participate in the decision-making process on long term sustainability projects is to capture their imagination. There are many ways to do this, but success often depends on taking a creative approach.  To maximise the success of these approaches, consultants must think carefully about the reason for engaging, who they are engaging and what information they need to share to foster meaningful dialogue with the public.  These elements will help shape a well-thought-out campaign that creates effective communication pathways using innovative real-world methods and digital tools so that local people are front and centre in the decision-making process.

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In the UK, climate change and the levelling up agenda are forcing a rethink on infrastructure investment. That is certainly the case in Scotland, where legislative framework for emissions reduction is underpinned by a legal commitment to deliver a ‘just transition’.

The Scottish government defines a just transition as ‘both the outcome – a fairer, greener future for all – and the process that must be undertaken in partnership with those impacted by the transition to net zero’. To deliver on its policy commitments, the Scottish government has set up a dedicated Commission who will be tasked with undertaking ‘meaningful engagement’ with local communities as well engaging and collaborating with ‘with other sources of expertise’, including relevant Scottish government advisory bodies on climate change and inequality amongst many others.

As Colin Wood, AECOM CEO for Europe and India said recently at the launch of the UK COP26 Presidency’s ‘Visions for a Net Zero Future’: “Efforts to tackle climate change will have limited success without the involvement of local citizens; leveraging that local knowledge will be key to achieving a resilient, net-zero future.” As infrastructure and built environment consultants, we are committed to delivering sustainable legacies. Listening to community voices to achieve a deeper understanding at a local level helps our multidisciplinary teams gather evidence to find the best solutions to our clients’ most complex challenges.

In this article we explore three different approaches that can be used to create equitable infrastructure needed to meet wider levelling up and net zero ambitions. We take Glasgow as our starting point, then draw on strategically-important transport planning, active travel and flood management projects across other major UK cities including Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham.

Enhancing engineering-led schemes through nature-based solutions

Managing flood risk is a priority for Glasgow. Climate Ready Clyde estimates that 21,500 extra homes will be at risk of flooding by 2080.

Several schemes of strategic importance that manage excess surface water have been initiated in the city region under the Glasgow City Region City Deal and through the collaborative Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage Partnership (MGSDP).  One of these projects is in Drumchapel, an area of deprivation identified as needing further support to tackle complicated socio-economic issues. As well as protecting areas downstream from flooding, the project needed to deliver additional social value for the people of Drumchapel.

Embedding the landscape team (which included our in-house ecologists and arborists) with the planning and engineering team from the outset enabled us to deliver additional benefits, as having a multidisciplinary capability meant that we were able to use natural restorative processes to cost-effectively enhance traditional engineering solutions.

For example, we knew that local people had difficultly traversing the site, so we installed robust bridges to make accessible crossing points over the Garscadden Burn, ensuring that the footpath gradients were suitable for wheelchair users. In some cases, a light design touch was all that was needed: boulders were retained to provide simple, natural play opportunities.

Any design solution must work for the local community in the longer term. Looking at flood management schemes through an environmental lens builds this resilience. We reshaped some of the retained soil to create naturally contoured berms so that they would act as an emergency reservoir in times of extreme rainfall. In addition, we chose native species to replicate the natural habitat, and planted an understory of native ground cover, a wetland meadow mix and trees that will need minimal intervention over the five-year implementation period. To be successful however, this approach requires hard evidence and a very firm understanding of existing soil, hydrology, weather and climate conditions.

These environmental interventions are communicated in a highly pictorial and visual way by new interpretation panels on The Drumchapel Way, which have been developed in conjunction with Glasgow City Council’s access and biodiversity officers with input from Forestry and Land Scotland.

Placing a higher weighting on socio-demographic factors

During the stakeholder consultation for the recently-conducted Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) for the Glasgow City Region, the climate emergency was cited ‘as an opportunity to make transport investment decisions that encourage people out of private vehicles through better active travel provision and better public transport’. To make this a reality, active travel across Scotland has just received a huge injection of funding. By 2024-5, at least £320 million will be allocated to active travel, taking the proportion of total spend from 3.5 per cent to ten per cent.

Historically, transport investment has been targeted using traditional factors, such as economic growth, congestion and road safety. By placing a higher weighting on socio-demographic objectives, active travel and public transport accessibility indicators however, transport planners have an opportunity to identify schemes in many new locations that meet levelling up and environmental agendas. This offers potential to create a more balanced infrastructure delivery plan.

In England, we used this novel approach during a macro study of the Key Route Network (KRN) in Birmingham and the wider region undertaken on behalf of Transport for West Midlands (TfWM). By linking our evidence-led assessment process with the emerging environmental and socially inclusive agenda, we were able to deliver 44 conceptual scheme plans that clearly indicate sites where investment would enhance local conditions for active travel, improve the immediate environment and improve residents’ health and wellbeing. The approach also ensured areas of low long-term investment were brought to the fore. Early business case style-documents were developed for each scheme to discuss the key connectivity challenges identified and suggest indicative costing and high-level delivery timescales for targeted measures. The study also included the development of five area-wide, thematic propositions on the subjects of 15-minute neighbourhoods and mobility hubs, electric vehicle charging and digital connectivity.

The process was designed to demonstrate alignment with a broader set of strategic objectives, to inform short, medium and long-term delivery plans, and to enable best use of future funding opportunities. We are now assisting TfWM in the development of a KRN delivery plan and monitoring framework.

An evidence-led approach to low traffic neighbourhoods

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN) create safer and more comfortable street environments to walk, cycle, wheel and spend time in by reducing the volume and speed of traffic.  They are key elements within wider city net zero transport strategies that encourage and increase the use of sustainable and active modes of transport, and are fundamental to Glasgow’s Liveable Neighbourhoods.

However, the coronavirus pandemic has taught us that LTNs can be challenging to implement successfully. By their nature, an LTN encourages and enables fundamental modal shift away from a reliance on private car use. Despite many of the benefits including encouraging ‘active travel’, air quality and safer community-focussed streets, they have been seen to be contentious and divisive as they can fundamentally change how local residents are able to move around their neighbourhoods.

To give local authorities the confidence to make robust decisions on LTNs and to communicate effectively with communities, planning and designs should be evidence-led. Gathering comprehensive data, such as traffic levels, speed, school travel plans as well as sat-nav origin destination analysis for example, provides a clear documentation trail that can be referenced easily. Furthermore, the presentation of data should be simple and legible to allow communities to understand it to build trust in the process.

Increasing conduits into communities directly affected helps gather better information and understand local issues and aspirations. Digital engagement tools are now so advanced that they can include 3D visualisations and map-based feedback. We have been using these tools on proposed active travel schemes across the UK including in East Lothian and in The Bee Network in Manchester to increase the demographic range involved in the consultation process.

Steering groups are another effective route into the community. Corstorphine Connections is an LTN in Edinburgh that has just been approved by Edinburgh Council. As part of a six-month period of intense community engagement, we founded a Community Reference Group (CRG) during  the early stages to help set the objectives and provide an additional way for the community to express their views. The CRG included members from community groups, parent councils, businesses, housing associations, bus user groups, the Living Streets group and the council’s Access Panel.  Members gave us valuable insight and local knowledge that we fed into the designs.

Initially, the Corstorphine LTN will be delivered under an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO). During the trial period, the CRG will continue to meet and feedback on the scheme. We are currently developing a detailed monitoring and evaluation programme that involves a variety of metrics including air quality, traffic impacts, noise and how people feel about and use the new community spaces. In this way, data and evidence will continue to inform the decision-making process while the scheme is in its trial period.

Leveraging local knowledge to achieve a just transition

To achieve a just transition to a low carbon urban economy, new infrastructure must have a positive impact on the communities it serves. Within the public and political environment of delivering transformational net-zero strategies, it is essential that decisions regarding new infrastructure must be transparent, robust, and backed by well-researched hard evidence, of which local knowledge and community feedback must be a huge part.

The importance of continuous monitoring and evaluation of schemes, and listening to those affected, will only improve how projects are delivered in future by building confidence and strengthening the case for change.

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At first glance, the figures are promising. The island of Ireland is increasing the amount of electricity produced from renewable sources. In the case of Northern Ireland (NI), that figure was 49 per cent, while in the Republic of Ireland (ROI), renewable generation (predominantly wind, along with small amounts of hydro, bio energy, ocean energy) accounted for 43 per cent of all electricity consumed, thus exceeding the 2020 EU target of 40 per cent.

However, these statistics tell only part of the story.  When we include transport and heat to assess overall energy use, the island of Ireland still has a long way to go to wean itself off fossil fuels. For example, a report into ROI energy use estimates that over 93 per cent of energy for heat still comes from fossil fuels. The report noted that this was the main reason that the ROI isn’t making enough progress on overall renewable energy targets set by the EU.

Both governments are seeking to address this gap in part by increasing the percentage of electricity from renewable sources to approximately 70 per cent by 2030.  In the ROI for example, some 12GW of renewable energy capacity will be added, with a heavy reliance on wind power. The closure of peat and coal plants will accelerate the transition. Hitting these goals would ensure the island of Ireland is back on track to reach net zero by 2050, in line with the both EU and UK government targets. To support this ambition however, changes are needed to the range of strategic energy assets currently available.

The ROI may have the second highest share of wind generated electricity in the 28 EU countries, but wind power alone cannot decarbonise the electricity supply. Complementary methods such as pump storage hydroelectricity (PSH), which can overcome the intermittency and remoteness of many renewable sources, are needed but have been under-deployed to date. Moreover, government policy to attract investment has too often focused on short-term metrics, leading to shorter term solutions. Together these have created barriers to investment that need to be overcome.

The challenges

Renewable energy is not a panacea. First, generation is inherently intermittent – it is never always sunny or windy – so alternative power sources are needed to build reliability, and the storage of surplus power is vital to fill the gaps. Further, the geographic remoteness of renewable generation locations adds complexity to the management and control of power distribution.

Second, energy demand from a technology-hungry society is only increasing and the data centre industry, for example, is desperate to secure lower-carbon power. Such technology companies would prefer stable grid supplies to local backup generation. Moreover, to continue to attract foreign investment and companies to the island, there needs to be more reassurance around a secure – as well as green – energy supply.

Finally, other ways to tackle energy reliability have their shortcomings. As technology evolves, hydrogen fuel cells will likely be part of the mix, but they are still under commercial development and presently less efficient and more expensive than lithium-ion and other battery types, which have their own limitations due to short lifespan and current dependency on relatively rare metals.

The case for pump storage hydroelectricity

PSH is the only established technology that can store large quantities of energy. It helps tackle the issue of intermittency in renewable energy generation and can provide other grid stabilising services.

PSH generally works by using excess renewable electricity to drive water up to a high-level storage reservoir (see Figure 1). When either the wind stops blowing or the sun is not shining, water is released downhill, via a tunnel, to power the electricity turbines and substation, ensuring a stable, dependable flow of energy over multi-hour duration. Compared to other storage technologies, PSH is currently the only viable technology capable of true bulk storage at utility-scale; storing large amounts of energy over the course of multiple hours, sometimes days.

PSH also provides a broad range of other services that are extremely valuable to the grid. These include voltage regulation, frequency control through system inertia and short-term reserve, whereby more or less generation can be ordered for the grid, depending on short term fluctuations in supply and demand. Another plus is that these stations can store energy for long periods and convert it back to electricity in mere seconds.

In summary, PSH can enable the grid to offset thousands of tonnes of CO₂ emissions a year and provide long-term energy security. No wonder the US Department of Energy’s Global Storage Database reported in November 2020 that PSH accounts for approximately 95 per cent of all official storage installations across the globe.

PSH is largely under-deployed in the UK and Ireland, though that situation is changing. There is only one active PSH scheme in Ireland: Turlough Hill, in the Wicklow Mountains, although we are currently assisting with the development of two further PSH projects across the island, and three in Scotland.  One of these projects, Red John – a 450MW scheme on the shores of Loch Ness – has just been given the green light by the Scottish government.

A different investment framework

There are several reasons for the current lack of PSH facilities in Ireland. The privatisation of energy companies led to the so-called “dash for gas” in the 1990s. Gas initially appealed to investors because it was cheap, but its use for baseload electricity generation needs to reduce markedly in line with net-zero ambitions.

By comparison, a PSH facility, which may take up to six years to construct, requires significant capital investment – though it can eventually generate many millions in returns and last for over 70 years.

However, these excellent returns are hard to access due to current electricity market legislation and the funding framework for long-term developments of a strategic nature such as PSH. As things stand, UK government policy allows only for relatively short Capacity Market contracts for example, which means that revenue visibility and security over the asset lifespan is limited. PSH schemes take longer to pay back, though mechanisms – such as long-term cap-and-floor tariffs – are in place in other parts of the world to support longer-term investment of such critical strategic energy assets.

Policy change is by nature challenging but better funding support mechanisms must be established to deliver investment into the right technologies, including strategic storage for the medium and long-term future of the island of Ireland.  Commenting on the Scottish Red John scheme, Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport echoed this sentiment, saying, “We continue to call on the UK government to take the urgent action required in reserved areas to provide investors with improved revenue certainty and unlock potentially significant investment in new pumped storage capacity in Scotland.”

There is precedence, however. Other strategic assets such as electrical interconnectors – physical links that allow electricity to flow across borders to the EU and Nordic electricity markets, sometimes via Great Britain – have been supported by a cap and floor regime. This is a combined approach that strikes a balance between commercial incentives and appropriate risk mitigation for project developers.

PSH is a valid, long duration, utility-scale storage solution that has enormous potential within a new all-island energy system. To facilitate implementation of these critical storage asset projects and technologies however, urgent policy changes need to be made at the highest level. Once in place, PSH can not only help the energy sector maximise its contribution to ROI and UK carbon reduction targets, but also increase grid resilience so that the island of Ireland remains attractive to the data centre and similar industries, so that foreign investment continues to flow in.

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It is hard to talk about net-zero carbon buildings without considering Passivhaus, and it is difficult to discuss Passivhaus without there being a sharp intake of breath and fears of cost increases. But does Passivhaus really cost more money?

Passivhaus versus capital cost

Passivhaus is a building standard and certification system that sets operational energy and occupant comfort performance criteria. Despite the name, Passivhaus can be applied to all building types – haus means building in German, not house – indeed there are plenty of large, non-domestic buildings that are applying the standard.

In the case of net-zero buildings, the emphasis is on reducing energy demand as far as possible so that a higher proportion can be met through onsite renewable energy generation on site (e.g. photovoltaics) and on the fact that the nation’s energy demands will increasingly be met by renewables, such as wind farms. The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has already set energy demand targets for offices and will be setting targets for other building types. The London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) guidance has set a 55kWh/m²/year figure for buildings – a seriously challenging target.

Passivhaus, however, sets maximum performance criteria for space heating and cooling demand, air permeability, overheating and primary energy demand. The Passivhaus heat demand target of <15kWh/m²/year is less than a fifth of a typical non-domestic building’s demand, which radically reduces the overall energy use and associated carbon emissions compared to the conventional design approach. There is a rigorous procedure for certification and stringent requirements to prove that the building is built as designed.  This has helped to close the much reported ‘performance gap’ as research shows that Passivhaus buildings are delivering on their design promises.

Crucially, proponents of Passivhaus argue that there is no capital cost uplift associated with applying the standard, as long as the principles drive the design from the very start.

To achieve Passivhaus standards within budget, cost savings must be sought elsewhere, such as creating compact built forms and simplifying the architectural detailing.  Furthermore, creating an integrated design that avoid thermal bridges reduces heat loss. This means it is easier to meet the stringent insulation standards and that most of the heat demand is met by internal heat gains from people and equipment. As a result, the heating plant is far smaller, and the cost savings can then be spent on triple glazing, openable windows and highly efficient ventilation systems.

Our research

That’s what the Passivhaus experts say, but how do we verify just how much Passivhaus costs? It is difficult to nail down the capital cost uplift for Passivhaus as each building is different and it is difficult to isolate the changes that relate to Passivhaus from the other differences between each building. So how do we get a real handle on capital cost uplifts of Passivhaus?

We explored this question in some recent AECOM-led research for University College London (UCL) Estates. We assembled a multi-disciplinary team consisting of an experienced Passivhaus architect, a Passivhaus-trained building services engineer and cost consultants from AECOM with experience of costing Passivhaus schemes. To get a clearer picture of the changes in capital cost, we took two recently completed buildings that were designed to current regulation and policy standards and ‘reimagined’ them as if they had been designed using Passivhaus principles by altering the building fabric and the MEP design. We applied the basic principles that make up a Passivhaus building – i.e. triple glazing, Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR) etc. – and then estimated the capital cost implications of each of the changes for each building. The third and final step was to estimate the operational costs and prepare comparison matrices showing the relative life cycle benefits for each measure.

The results showed that the capital costs uplifts were far lower than commonly assumed. The overall capital cost uplift was only 0.9 per cent and 0.04 per cent for a new build and a deep refurbishment respectively (see breakdown in Figure 1). This contrasts strongly with the 10-15 per cent uplift commonly quoted and shows that a relatively small cost can yield huge energy demand and carbon savings. It also puts the idea of offsetting the energy demand through on-site generation within touching distance.

Following the research, UCL Estates has updated its standards to place a much greater emphasis on reducing energy demand as part of its approach to net-zero carbon buildings. Ben Stubbs, Head of Sustainability at UCL Estates commented: “Our work with AECOM provided reassurance that implementing Passivhaus principles doesn’t necessarily cost more for new buildings and can even result in significant savings when viewed in life cycle terms.”

Passivhaus provides a rigorous approach to radically cutting energy demand, enabling net zero buildings. Furthermore, because Passivhaus is actually closing the performance gap, it is a standard that truly delivers net zero carbon buildings.

This research was undertaken by the following AECOM experts in collaboration with UCL:

• Dave Cheshire, Sustainability, Project Director
• Evangelia Mitsiakou, Architect and Passivhaus Designer, Project Manager
• Rebecca Lindridge, Associate, Cost Consultant
• Florentino Bercasio, Director, Cost Management
• Chris Bicknell, Asset Advisory, Director, Life Cycle Cost Consultant

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The energy market in Australia is moving fast, with economic drivers and customer preferences outpacing government policy. State and territory governments are introducing policies to encourage the uptake of low or zero emission vehicles. There have also been several recent investment commitments from the private sector, state, and federal government to support advanced biofuel and green hydrogen projects. 

The choices we make in the next few years with regards to these assets have the potential to shape the energy sector for decades to come.  

Unlocking the potential  

Our domestic consumption of petroleum products, including petrol, diesel and jet fuel, is supported by a network of fuel storage terminals. Over time hundreds of smaller city and regional facilities have been consolidated into larger installations spread around the Australian coastline.  

These facilities are positioned to provide optimal access to the markets they serve and the necessary supporting infrastructure such as port, power, water, gas and fuel infrastructure. Over the years these facilities have become integrated into well-established industrial areas where there is community acceptance of their industrial land use. With the right planning and investment, all these sites have the potential to play an extremely valuable and important part of the future clean energy supply chain.  

From fuel storage to energy generation 

We predict that the strategic value of our petroleum fuels storage terminals will see them progressively transition to the generation, storage or transmission of renewable energy and future fuels. To make this a reality the right forward planning and investment will be key. 

To understand the strategic value of these fuel storage terminals, and the role they may play in our energy future, AECOM analysed the strategic attributes of 58 sites across Australia and New Zealand. We assessed each site potential future utility and what role it could play in the generation, storage or transmission of renewable energy and future fuels.   

The future fuel unicorns 

The fuels storage terminal sites are all well positioned to meet current fuel demands, but they vary greatly in their suitability to support our future energy needs. Although all sites potentially have a role to play as part of our energy future, only seven achieved “future fuel unicorn” status, awarded to highly connected and versatile sites, ideally suited to supporting the energy transition. These seven sites had a rare combination of good access to power, water, gas, port infrastructure, combined with land available to generate renewable energy.  

 Key findings: 

Renewable energy superpower  

For Australia to reach our potential as a major exporter of renewable energy we will need to find commercially viable means of domestically distributing and exporting our vast renewable energy resources to global markets. 

Many of these sites have good wind resource and solar irradiance, located in the vicinity of other large energy consumers, and the electricity transmission network. This ability to connect into the grid for both import and export of high volumes of electricity presents numerous opportunities including onsite energy generation and/or storage.  

The storage, domestic distribution, and export of renewable energy in the form of hydrogen is predicted to become commercially viable in the next few years. Many of these sites are ideally located to support this emerging hydrogen market, including though the generation and injection of hydrogen directly into the gas network or export via the existing hydrocarbon transmission infrastructure.   

Fuel storage terminals located at ports in North Queensland, the Northern Territory and Northern Western Australia may well be the best suited for the production and export of hydrogen due to abundant renewable energy resources and proximity to the key hydrogen markets in Singapore, Korea, China and Japan. 

Whether it’s side-by-side with petroleum fuels during a transition period or via a substantial transformation into renewable energy and future fuel generation, storage and export, these sites have a key role to play.  

We think now is the time to look beyond the current horizon and consider a far more radical future for these sites as the infrastructure of our energy transition and low carbon future.  

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Many client organisations are beginning to win the war on data governance, with mature data structures, well-defined libraries and efficient, accessible digital systems in place for data submission. Yet, the battle to obtain accurate data from the supply chain persists. Focus on this weak point is essential if industry is to truly embed data-driven practices.

Historically, the primary challenge has been the accurate and timely capture of granular cost data to inform benchmarking and facilitate greater accuracy for future investment decisions. As the construction industry continues to utilise digital technologies however, detailed asset information and robust carbon assessments are adding to these data capture demands.

In the UK, it is mandatory for central government and arm’s length bodies (ALB) to follow data-driven practices on a comply or explain basis, as set out in the Construction Playbook which was published by the UK Government in December 2020. The playbook recognises the ‘golden thread’ of building information and advocates that “contracting authorities should seek opportunities to collaborate … and adopt shared requirements and common standards… to drive efficiencies, innovation and productivity” and that “embedding digital technologies … will improve the performance, sustainability and value for money of projects and programmes”.

Our data scientist Niru Sundararajah recently published an article outlining the good data governance practices that can help ensure successful data outcomes, but this is only half the solution if you are struggling to obtain the data in the first place. In this article, we outline the steps organisations can take to maximise the value of their data by ensuring their supply chain delivers digital assets, alongside physical ones.

Make it standard

Computer scientist Andrew S. Tanenbaum once said, “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.”  This is as true for the construction industry as it is in computing.

Cost breakdown structures (CBS) aligned to established methods of measurement vary across sectors yet all offer similar-but-different breakdowns at various levels of granularity. In recent years however, the growth of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has brought attention to a range of classification systems such as Uniclass and the International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS). The UK BIM Framework should be referenced as best practice as its standardised approaches to information requirements as well as the classification and exchange of data gives common definitions which, if adopted universally across sectors, can bring efficiencies to all parties and build powerful repositories of digital assets.

Often however, it is not simply a case of choosing a standard; many organisations have evolved their own CBS and asset breakdown structures (ABS) in their financial and asset management functions respectively, immediately establishing multiple ‘golden threads’ that do not get utilised across the full delivery lifecycle (and often with no consistent alignment even between silos within the same business). Such differing specifications lead to challenges when trying to compare data between organisations, so with no one-size-fits-all, it is little wonder that contractors serving multiple clients cannot easily provide data to the exact prescribed requirements of each.

In these situations, adopting or aligning to an alternative, recognised standard across the whole organisation will entail complex transformation, or even loss, of a valuable base of legacy data – but in a world of ever-increasing digital practice it is a case of if, not when, organisations take action to break the deadlock of immutable incompatibility. This requires acceptance of short-term vulnerability – and temporary mitigations such as extra assurance and benchmarking activities – as new data is acquired in return for medium- and long-term gains in the digital capabilities espoused by the Construction Playbook.

“Adopting or aligning to an alternative, recognised standard across the whole organisation will entail complex transformation, or even loss, of a valuable base of legacy data – but in a world of ever-increasing digital practice it is a case of if, not when, organisations take action to break the deadlock of immutable incompatibility.”

Make it easy

Suppliers will have varying capability when it comes to providing project data. This not only means that quality of submissions can vary but also that with the burden of data provision constantly growing, the onus is on clients to avoid inefficiency in their requests if they are to avoid inadvertently driving up the overhead costs they have to pay.

As net-zero initiatives continue to mature, increasingly detailed carbon data will be requested, potentially bringing yet another set of measures, classification and derivation rules into play. Through our work with large infrastructure clients such as HS2 and the Environment Agency on integrating financial, sustainability and project performance data, we have developed the methodologies that allow these varied datasets to be efficiently managed against common structures, minimising the opportunity for errors, easing data collection effort and facilitating robust project controls.

To ease the data provision burden across all classes of data, clients should seek to implement an ask-once policy whereby suppliers are not asked to submit the same information multiple times by different areas of the client business. This can be as simple as, for example, not requesting cumulative expenditure when monthly is already being provided, or not requesting that project details are entered when a reference code, from which the information can be indexed, is already part of the submission. It can also mean considering precisely what is being asked for relative to the ultimate organisational objectives. Requests can be reduced by targeting only the most useful data, as opposed to demanding absolutely everything.

On larger programmes and frameworks where the cost benefit is justified, clients can help suppliers through collaborative activities ranging in scale from simply providing advocate resources to assist suppliers in getting submissions right through to providing checking and validation tools to pre-approve data before submission. Or, clients can undertake a systems engineering exercise to fully align and integrate client and supplier reporting systems to automate data acquisition.

The asset handover stage often involves detailed inspections. The latest cloud-based digital tools provide platforms that can manage this process, collecting and validating data using mobile devices in the field in real time against a corporate breakdown structure or design BIM. Leveraging technology like this can bring huge benefits in data collection efficiency and accuracy. Regardless of the tactical implementation, in all cases a clear process for the submission, validation and subsequent approval or feedback should be established as a business-as-usual process.

“To ease the data provision burden across all classes of data, clients should seek to implement an ask-once policy whereby suppliers are not asked to submit the same information multiple times by different areas of the client business. This can be as simple as, for example, not requesting cumulative expenditure when monthly is already being provided.”

Make it attractive

Making valid data submissions a contractual requirement can be a crude tool, but an effective one if used correctly. Accurate project data is valuable, so having a significant final payment dependent upon receipt of valid data is not unjustified and will ensure that suppliers treat submissions with the same priority that clients do.

Without adequate incentivisation, data collection can become an unfunded tick-box exercise, completed to bare minimum standards by the cheapest resource, regardless of their capability or proximity to the project on which they are reporting. Inconsistent or incorrect data can be worse than no data at all; at least with no data a client knows they have a gap and can look for alternative information, whereas the consequences of relying on data of poor or unknown quality can be catastrophic.

For more mature suppliers however, the process can provide sufficient reciprocal benefits to be its own incentive. Digital twins – digital replicas of physical assets that respond in real-time – can provide a vehicle for data exchange and, as the Construction Playbook recognises, effectively embedding digital technologies such as these into construction delivery can facilitate a number of benefits including improving safety, enabling innovation, reducing costs, and supporting more sustainable outcomes.

Time to act

Clients need robust data from their supply chains if they are to keep innovating and improving. Equally the supply chains need to become more capable at collecting and exchanging that data, and there are enormous benefits available to both sides in adopting common approaches and standards.

Ultimately, clients and suppliers who fail to implement actions to make that data standardised, easy and attractive to obtain will fall behind their peers, especially as we look to a future where digital triplets – the next stage of evolution of the digital twin, where each individual asset or product has its own digital record for tracking, querying and analysis – will become common practice.

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The much anticipated publication in October of the NHS Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service comes as the NHS embarks on a long-term programme of investment in health infrastructure. With £3.7 billon funding to build 40 new hospitals, delivering on the net zero commitment is going to require a new approach.

Net zero means reducing the carbon emissions associated with a building’s usage and construction to zero or below.  Thanks to the huge and varied demands required of them, hospitals have a large carbon footprint from both construction and operation, although modern design and a decarbonised grid look set to radically reduce operational emissions in future. To achieve the NHS objective, hospital trusts should look closely at the building structure, which our analysis shows has the potential to be most impactful when it comes to reducing embodied carbon demands.

As NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens makes clear, the climate emergency is also a health emergency. Leading by example, the NHS – which is responsible for around 4 percent of the nation’s carbon emissions – has set out a clear objective of reaching carbon neutrality by 2040.

Official targets for embodied carbon have not yet been set for new hospitals, but we have compiled what we think those targets might look like by using targets for Greater London Authority office buildings, those put forward by the London Energy Transformation Initiative, combined with AECOM benchmark studies of both office buildings and recent completed hospitals. Figure 1 demonstrates the range of ‘do minimum’ and ‘aspirational’ targets for both GLA and AECOM benchmark studies. This has enabled us to set our own targets as shown.

To inform net zero strategies, the  UK Green Building Council and LETI have compiled a set of building guidelines, to which AECOM has contributed. In addition to these considerations, hospitals have specific requirements that deserve careful consideration.

On an individual scale, hospitals contain a variety of departments ranging from administration through to theatres and imaging. Each space has different structural design requirements which need to be addressed: from space requirements influencing grid spacing, to floor loading requirements and vibration limits. The buildings also need to accommodate complex equipment and mechanical, electrical and public health (MEP) routing requirements, with high space demands for services. Medical equipment such as MRI scanners are heavy and have stringent vibration criteria.

To address the specific and changing nature of healthcare provision, hospitals require adaptable and flexible solutions – as the rapid re-purposing of spaces during the coronavirus crisis highlighted. In the future, hospital buildings and facilities must be designed to respond to multiple and fast changing health situations, with space for new technologies.

From operational energy efficiency to the question of whether to build new or refurbish, there are many considerations for hospital trusts to consider. In this article, we are going to focus on what our own analysis has shown to have the most impact on reducing embodied carbon emissions: the building structure.

Thanks to experience delivering carbon efficient buildings such the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratories for Sustainable Chemistry, the world’s first carbon neutral lab, and the LEED Platinum facility at NASA Ames Research Center in California, AECOM has been building up a library of carbon data relating to a building’s structure. Figure 2 shows that half of the embodied carbon of a typical office building is due to the structure. When it comes to hospitals, the percentages are similar, despite the unique challenges placed on such buildings.

Three considerations for net zero hospital design

To reduce the carbon footprint of a building structure, three considerations are key: design, materials choice and offsite manufacture and assembly.

1/ Design

Three broad principles will help achieve the best energy efficient outcomes from design:

a) A pragmatic approach

To rationalise material use and reduce carbon content throughout the building, the following lean engineering practices will help:

• providing regular grids,
• maximising the repeatability of structural elements,
• designing to standard component size as much as possible,
• maximising pre-fabrication potential,
• limiting the structural spans,
• avoiding irregular shapes and structural complexities such as transfers.

Reducing the use of basements can also have significant savings. AECOM benchmark studies have shown that 20 per cent of embodied carbon can be found within the substructure. This figure rises exponentially with the inclusion of basements.

b) Avoid over-specification

Like the human body, the different elements of a building are inter-connected, and prescribing a specific outcome for one variable can put pressure on other variables. The key is achieving a balance between flexibility requirements, which require additional functionality, and efficient design. This requires input from NHS estate managers, clinical planners and the design team as a whole to first establish flexible criteria and the strategies to implement these.

c) Applying circular economy principles

Design focused on eliminating waste and re-using resources can increase building life span as well as incorporating flexible structural arrangements. From the outset, consideration should be given to what happens at the end of a building’s life, designing for dismantle and re-use.

2/ Materials choice

The choice of materials used in construction has the potential to impact embodied carbon significantly, and exploring the most appropriate material should be considered from the outset. As Figure 3 shows, using sustainable materials such as timber, and reducing high carbon content materials such as swapping cement with replacement materials can make a huge impact.

Developing designs around the chosen material will maximise carbon savings. AECOM has developed bespoke tools to define materials choice by enabling rapid prototyping of early stage options and reporting against performance criteria including carbon content. Along with our carbon calculators and advanced analysis tools we can then maximise carbon savings throughout the design development of the building.

3/ Design for offsite manufacture (Modern Methods of Construction/MMC)

To support the modernisation of the construction sector, off-site production is being actively encouraged by the government, whose five central departments have adopted a ‘presumption in favour of offsite construction’ for public buildings. The NHS looks to be following suit with a requirement to explain how , when applying for funding from government.

Through efficient energy usage in manufacturing techniques and the reduction in material usage and waste,  offsite production. Evidence collected so far suggests that construction waste and site CO2 emissions can be more than halved through a DfMA approach compared with traditional practices.  It can take many forms, from constructing individual structural elements (steel, concrete or timber) through to full building modules. Taking full advantage of these benefits requires structural engineers to adopt the design principles stated above from the outset.

The world’s first ‘net zero’ national health service

With NHS net zero carbon hospital standards due to be set in Spring 2021, the business case for the planned new hospitals will need to demonstrate the energy strategies to meet them. The challenge is to not only meet these emerging requirements, but to pre-empt them. To be sustainable, the new projects should be built to serve current and future generations.

Tools and processes to deliver on these aspirations include rapid prototyping and optimisation software used from inception, through to advanced bespoke carbon calculators giving BIM linked real time carbon assessments through the detailed design phases. The planned 40 hospitals should be net zero heroes, carbon exemplars that set the trend for future NHS buildings and infrastructure.

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Governing bodies and decision-makers are often tied to specific jurisdictional boundaries; yet, our environmental, economic, public health, and equity challenges are rarely confined by these boundaries. There is an increasing need to work at the regional and mega-regional scale to effectively address and overcome these challenges. Non-government organizations (NGOs) and research organizations are bridging the gap by thinking and acting regionally.

Urban planning and research NGOs in the U.S. and globally are developing regional growth strategies, convening public and private sector stakeholders, establishing policy frameworks for growth, and addressing social equity concerns such as land use and infrastructure issues.

During the Urban Land Institute’s Fall 2020 meeting, AECOM’s Stephen Engblom had the opportunity to speak with the leaders of three key regional planning organizations, Alicia John-Baptiste, President and CEO of San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR); Tom Wright, President of New York’s Regional Plan Association (RPA), and MarySue Barrett, President of the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) in Chicago, to discuss their efforts to prepare and plan for a future that better meets the needs of everyone.

Each of these organizations were formed at a time of crisis and evolved as key conveners across jurisdictions, sectors and political divides. Therefore, as our cities face unprecedented challenges, their ability to think and act regionally and across mega-regions is critical to scale solutions that address the most pressing urban crises of our time. These NGOs bring together and align thinking across the government, public stakeholders, and people, and across sectors and timeframes, through independent analysis and recommendations.

Engblom: Tell us about your NGO, its work at the regional scale and the value of politically independent regional planning organizations in guiding cities/regions to equitable and resilient futures.

John-Baptiste: SPUR is an urban policy organization founded after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco to advocate for quality, affordable housing construction. We are in unprecedented times as a region and a nation: experiencing a global pandemic, waking up to the need for racial justice, and recently in the Bay Area, seeing the Northern California fires associated with climate change.

Organizations like SPUR tackle long-term systemic challenges as a country and region. We knew even before the pandemic that we needed change and the importance of surfacing solutions to effect the changes. Inspired by RPA, we are preparing a regional strategy that addresses regional needs, and measures to move policies in different directions across issues of housing, transportation and the economy.

We recently published Model Places, in collaboration with AECOM, to ensure the Bay Area’s sustainable and equitable future for those already here, and those who want to come here. Our organization benefits the region through its multi-disciplinary approach to policy. We are independent of the system so we can approach the work through both practical and aspirational lenses.

Wright:  RPA has been in existence for 98 years when the Russell Sage Foundation funded the Committee on the Plan of New York and its Environs to guide the development of the region and enhance the quality of life of residents, without regard to political boundaries. RPA has created a new regional plan for each generation: 1929, 1968, 1996 and the latest plan, published in 2017. Each plan establishes a generational regional and metropolitan blueprint.

As an NGO, we are an independent voice outside the government sector so we can stand up against the status quo. In the New York metropolitan region where RPA works, there are 31 counties and 782 cities/municipalities (one of which is New York City with 8.5 million people). There are also three states, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, that make up the tristate area. We work across silos so when we discuss a transportation project, we can connect it to economic development, resilience, and social equity across these states.

The pandemic is challenging urbanity, social justice, and climate change. Our planning capabilities provide the larger context to address these pandemic-related challenges to urbanity, social justice and climate change. We work with civic organizations across a region with a strong civic structure. Our work on congestion pricing, for example, was made possible by collaborating with local grassroots organizations in addition to other transit advocates and business groups.

Barrett: The Metropolitan Planning Council was founded in 1934 during the Great Depression. We were initially founded to advocate for affordable housing. Our range of issues have expanded to drive progress in delivering a better, bolder and more equitable future for everyone. In recent months, the coronavirus pandemic and racial injustices have shown that the current system doesn’t work for everyone. Our organization is rededicated to the research, advocacy and partnerships needed to fuel solutions at this high-stakes time.

MPC understands the equitable importance of working collaboratively with innovative civic and community groups. As an independent organization, MPC acknowledges the tremendous pressures on the public, corporate and philanthropic sectors, and the need to center community voice in forging transformative solutions. We are trusted intermediaries who can help solve complex problems.

Our Cost of Segregation Study, completed in conjunction with the Urban Institute and published in 2017, is a seminal organizational product. We quantified the price of systemic racism for the top 100 metropolitan areas, measuring it in residents’ lost income, lives and, potential. Chicago’s hyper-segregation means that a Black adult earns $3,000 less annually and the region as a whole loses an average of $8 billion annually.

These quantifications led to a regional reckoning. In 2018, MPC followed up with a Roadmap for Our Equitable Future that prompted introspection within our organization. We are also asking every Chicago institution to adopt a racial equity framework and recommended two dozen specific near-term actions. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who took office in 2019, is committed to tackling poverty and inequity and has challenged the corporate community to join with others to create an equitable recovery. These two phases of work armed us with the tools to create a more equitable society.

Engblom: Each of you touched on collaboration. Can you cite examples where regional planning entities have collaborated for better results, either amongst your peer organizations, or with public or private entities?

Wright:  RPA is very interested in preparing a comparable Cost of Segregation study for our region and hopes to announce such a collaboration soon.

In the Fourth Regional Plan, we made health one of the key pillars and looked at how we could reconnect urban planning, metropolitan planning, and public health. We researched a regional health index at the metropolitan scale (comparing health indices at different counties and understanding it at the regional scale). We then analyzed the built environment’s impact on public health and quality of life. Congestion pricing, for example, has potentially enormous benefits for public health.

With the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies among others, we created the Healthy Regions Planning Exchange. This new group, which encompasses SPUR, MPC, and eight other organizations, including indigenous peoples, met in February to develop the current framework.

John-Baptiste: I worked for local government for 16 years. That background helps me understand what is feasible, but also where SPUR has a role to push for solutions that are more aspirational. Public transportation plays a major role in regional sustainability. We are focused on measures to make our transportation system work better across the region. Currently we have 9 counties and 27 transit agencies. Working with the relevant transit agencies and the Bay Area’s metropolitan planning organization (MPO), we developed the Coordinated Network Planner concept, borrowing from programs in Germany and Switzerland.

With the San Francisco Estuary Institute, we also published a report on climate adaptation and sea level rise in the bay focusing on nature’s boundaries rather than jurisdictional boundaries. We are now working with a cross-sector of government, community, and civic organizations to build the government’s capacity to implement these actions across jurisdictions.

Barrett: Collaboration is a daily practice. Jurisdictional boundaries and terms of office are irrelevant. Between 2008 and 2019, we issued a cost of “gridlock” study over the next decade, we methodically released the Cost of Congestion Study. We then collected best practices and models for financing and setting transportation priorities and followed up with a quantitative analysis of the gap, in 2016, $43 billion of state of disrepair. Then, MPC organized a #BustedCommute campaign to gather pictures and videos of commute barriers. In 2018, we issued a report called “Transit Means Business” which documented that those businesses near transit not only didn’t lose jobs during The Great Depression, they were the only ones to post job gains.

Years of effort culminated with the State of Illinois committing to a $43 billion, six-year capital program. We continue to prod on decision-makers on how to best deploy those resources. With the pandemic and social injustice, we must deploy those dollars differently.

Wright: Our organizations influence the government and public by doing these quantitative analyses. Over the past 20 years, our ability to do these analyses has been elevated by GIS and other technical tools. At the same time, we are supported by boards of directors and corporate partners who have areas of expertise that provide the bench for our small, nimble organizations. Many of our board members are also former public officials with expertise in the issues we work on. We rely on their insights to make our work effective.

Engblom: A common thread in this discussion is how we can improve inefficiencies in our existing processes that have resulted in poor outcomes or inequitable outcomes. Emerging from the pandemic, what does an equitable future look like and what will it require?

Barrett: We need to take advantage of this moment to have this collective conversation. The quintuple crises — public health, economic, racial, climate and political — underscores that cross-sector collaboration and coordinated policies and investments are the only path to reset and rebuild. Old power structures that limited decision-making to a select few have blocked too many residents of metropolitan Chicago from a brighter future. Shared performance metrics and data-driven decisions can guide dollar reallocation at the state and local levels. We can change the harsh reality of Chicago neighborhoods stuck in a never-ending cycle of gun violence, coronavirus contraction, and unemployment. Only with systemic change will we close our racial wealth and health disparity gaps.

Our three grounding questions are: Who is at the table? How are we measuring? And how are we re-prioritizing resources? If we apply these, Chicago has a chance to be a model for other cities and regions.

Wright: We need integrated approaches. In the New York City metropolitan region, we have one short-term existential threat, the mass transit system which relies on farebox revenues. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) needs federal investment. The agency is losing $200 million weekly and by the years’ end could see a 50-percent commuter rail service reduction and 40-percent subway and bus reduction along with 10,000 staff furloughs. This has a ripple effect on the region, its recovery speed and longer-term MTA financial health relative to capital plans. We are working with other advocates to stave off these cuts.

John-Baptiste: We are striving to create regions where everyone can thrive. For that to happen, we need to create just conditions and baseline needs must be met. Getting to a Better Normal requires us to 1) confront the truth of systemic racism; 2) remember how interdependent we are; and 3) act in our spheres of influence. For SPUR, that means analyzing data and evaluating policies to correct harms of the past – and address today’s inequities.

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In response to the unprecedented impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on public transportation ridership and operations, AECOM teamed with Seamless Bay Area to envision how transit services could adapt. After consulting with regional transit decision makers, the team has developed modeling tools that enable scenarios to forecast the potential impacts of the length of the coronavirus crisis and mode shifts through an equity lens. These scenarios forecast potential steps towards recovery with the goal of improving accessibility, connectivity and ridership.

Like many regions around the world, public transit in the Bay Area has been challenged immensely by the impacts of coronavirus. Six months after Bay Area counties first issued a shelter-at-home order, ridership remains over 75 percent below pre-pandemic levels[1], creating a fiscal crisis and forcing difficult service-provision decisions. The Bay Area’s 27 transit agencies are each grappling with these changing conditions. Recognizing their shared challenges, they have also begun to collaborate in unprecedented ways (Figure 1).

Figure 1.  Summary of key Bay Area transit challenges, successes, and uncertainties that influenced the AECOM and Seamless Bay Area’s recovery vision analysis.

To support regional recovery efforts, including the recently established Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force, AECOM and Seamless Bay Area sought to better understand what a reimagined transit network could look like in the Bay Area, and what benefits it could provide. A vision for an integrated and optimized network was defined for this initiative by building upon existing transit agency long-term vision statements as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The network plan vision defined for this initiative builds upon and complements existing transit agency long-term vision statements.

The team developed three potential scenarios for analysis, based on varying combinations of network optimization and investment levels, and compared these to the pre-coronavirus baseline representing the “status quo” as well as to one another. These scenarios, shown in Figure 3, were then modeled with multiple factors to forecast likely future conditions, and to help forecast the effects of network optimization and investment.

Figure 3.  Scenarios B and C developed as part of the recovery vision sought to improve the extent of the frequent all-day, 10-minute network through targeted service changes. The goal was to provide greater transit accessibility to more people across the region.

The first of these scenarios (Scenario A) is based on service patterns as of June 2020 and assumes continued low investment in transit. For the alternate scenarios, the team identified a set of guiding principles for service changes with a particular focus on the preservation of service to Communities of Concern, as identified by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which include communities with concentrations of both minority and low-income residents, or that have a concentration of low-income residents and other disadvantage factors.[2]

Network changes were made to maintain a frequent network of trunk lines, provide greater regularity of service throughout the day, and build off of past efforts such as the megaregional rail vision developed by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) and AECOM, Seamless Bay Area’s Vision Map, TransForm’s ReX Vision, and the core service plans of the region’s transit operators. The result was an “optimized core network” service concept that corresponds to existing transit investment levels (Scenario B). The optimized core network is not intended to be a fully developed network plan, but rather a forecasting tool that supports collaboration and engagement among transit agencies and stakeholders at a greater scale. The team also identified how that network could be enhanced if major new sources of transit investment were approved (Scenario C).

The team estimated the potential impacts of these network permutations on accessibility to local and regional destinations, employment, and housing using geographic information systems (GIS). Additionally, AECOM’s Mobilitics^TM[3] scenario planning tool was used to forecast how each network could perform under various possible economic recovery scenarios ranging from a quick 12-month coronavirus economic recovery (Economic Scenario Y), versus a more cautious 24-month economic recovery (Economic Scenario Z).

The result was a set of six future scenarios, as shown in Figure 4. The analysis yielded some significant forecast outputs for regional decision makers to consider as they chart a path towards a “better normal.”

Figure 4.  Summary of the three transit scenarios (A, B, and C) and two economic scenarios (Y and Z) developed as part of the Transit Recovery Vision, and the six resulting scenarios that were tested using AECOM’s scenario planning tool, Mobilitics.

As shown in Figure 5, the team developed a dashboard, in which variables can be toggled easily, to compare different scenarios, examine estimated outputs such as peak versus off-peak trips, isolate counties/districts/and degrees of Communities of Concern, and evaluate estimated accessibility by employment or household. View our video here to see a preview of this dashboard.

Figure 5. AECOM developed a dashboard to present estimated outputs and how accessibility to both housing and jobs could be affected by service changes, enabling isolation of specific geographies, income levels, and transit trip durations.

Forecast Outputs and Considerations:

1. The next two years are critical to regional transit success.

The Mobilitics tool forecasted that whether a quick or cautious economic recovery is assumed, the pandemic could have a long-term dampening impact on transit ridership across all scenarios that were forecasted. However, if riders do not come back to transit in pre-pandemic numbers within the next two to three years, the economic and environmental costs could be significant. The differential between Scenario A (current network, low investment) and Scenario C (optimized core network, growing investment) could be significant: the combined cost of additional roadway traffic delays (Figure 6) and added congestion could amount to approximately $860 million to $1 trillion of lost economic productivity, and approximately 155,000 to 170,000 metric tons of additional carbon dioxide equivalent/vehicle/year.

Figure 6. Mobilitics scenario planning outputs forecast that the impact of increased congestion could be most severe in the next two to three years if riders shift away from using transit, due to insufficient service or perceived lack of safety.

These forecasted outcomes based on our assumptions and possible transit scenarios underscore the importance of funding transit service throughout the pandemic to maintain service levels, alongside robust safety and customer communications programs to increase rider trust in transit and to promote faster recovery of ridership levels. Further detailed analysis will be required to fully quantify the impacts of COVID-19 on transit systems in the Bay Area in the near-, medium-, and long-term.

2. Overall accessibility can be expanded – to local and regional destinations – while keeping total service hours the same.

Our approach to network optimization deliberately held the region’s total transit operating service hours constant between Transit Scenarios A and B. This was done to forecast the potential gains that could be achieved without substantial additional funding for capital improvements or expansions, although this could require changes in agency coordination and operation cost management. For Transit Scenario B, the team modified service across the region without being restricted by existing agency boundaries or modes, to forecast what a regionwide approach to service optimization driven by regional, rider-focused goals could look like.

The forecast outputs demonstrated that net improvements to accessibility may be possible with network redesigns. Under Scenario B, the optimized network, approximately 60 percent of lower-income households could experience improved accessibility to destinations within 60 minutes compared to Scenario A, the current network. By contrast, only 10 percent of lower-income households were forecasted to have worse accessibility under Scenario B than Scenario A, while approximately 30 percent could experience no change.

3. Equitable accessibility to local and regional destinations should be a lens for making decisions on how to provide service.

The team was specifically interested in how the scenarios could impact Communities of Concern. While Scenario B was forecasted to have a net positive impact on accessibility for trips originating in the region’s Communities of Concern, some communities were forecasted to have worse accessibility due to the network optimization service changes, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. The GIS estimated outputs suggested that while approximately 30,000 households in Communities of Concern, or approximately 10%, (left) could have accessibility to fewer destinations within 90 minutes under Transit Scenario B (Optimized Network) compared to Transit Scenario A (June 2020 network), a much greater number – approximately 280,000 households or approximately 75%  – could have accessibility to more destinations within 90 minutes in Scenario B than in Scenario A (right).

While the forecasts focused on regional impacts, a more detailed analysis of the local impacts of service changes on equity, including additional input from transit agencies and communities served, is recommended to be included in any significant network redesign. Service changes should consider not only accessibility for Communities of Concern, but also the destinations to which it is most important to maintain accessibility (e.g., hospitals, schools), and which job types should be prioritized for core network accessibility.

4. To realize the accessibility benefits of an optimized network, reduce disincentives to transfers.

The GIS and Mobilitics estimate and forecast outputs highlight the importance of streamlined transfers between transit services to maximize the accessibility benefits of the overall regional network and to make transit more appealing to elective riders. The current friction inherent in transfers among the 27 transit agencies (some with multiple transit services) could be reduced through the application of multi-agency strategies, such as more frequent service, aligned schedules at transfer points to reduce wait times, stops and stations designed to facilitate rider movement from one transit vehicle to another, and integrated fare policies to eliminate different fare structures and payment points.

Image source: Hiroko Koike, AECOM

5. Long-term funding sources need to do better than pre-coronavirus.

While the GIS estimated outputs showed that an optimized core network could provide near-term accessibility benefits, Mobilitics showed that long-term ridership recovery is forecasted to be strongly associated with overall service levels, underscoring the importance of increased funding  – see Quick Recovery (Scenario C) and Cautious Recovery (Scenario C) scenarios in Figure 8. Scenario C (optimized core network + growing investment) was developed to forecast what a transformational influx of new funding – such as a new Bay Area tax measure – could mean for our transit future. Network optimization on a regional scale could make more efficient use of transit dollars, winning taxpayer confidence to maintain existing funding sources and support new tax measures.

Figure 8. Over the longer term, increased investment is likely a primary determinant of increasing ridership above pre-coronavirus levels. Scenario C, assuming 135% of pre-coronavirus transit investment levels by 2030, is forecasted to result in significantly higher ridership than the other two scenarios tested (A and B), whether a quick or cautious economic recovery is assumed.

Next steps

The AECOM and Seamless Bay Area Transit Recovery Vision forecasts that a regionwide approach to service optimization and application of data analysis tools can generate forecast outputs that can help transit agencies and stakeholders make the difficult decisions that could guide Bay Area transit to recovery. On this basis, agencies, stakeholders, and decision makers can forecast possible impacts of additional scenarios and assumptions easily, as part of a comprehensive process, to work out the many details of redeploying service and regaining riders – and ultimately achieve their near-term recovery goals and long-term visions, and to realize the world-class transit system the Bay Area deserves.

To find out more, click here.

Disclaimer:
The scenario planning data in this article is intended for forecasting purposes only to demonstrate potential outcomes of proposed transit scenarios. This information should not be used to make funding decisions.

[1] http://mtc.legistar.com/gateway.aspx?M=F&ID=462e6d33-c92a-46bd-a7da-8c3fef243325.pdf

[2] Disadvantage factors include persons with limited English proficiency, zero-vehicle households, seniors aged 75 years and over, persons with one or more disability, single-parent families, and renters paying more than 50 percent of their household income on housing. Source: http://2040.planbayarea.org/sites/default/files/2017-07/Equity_Report_PBA%202040%20_7-2017.pdf

[3] Mobilitics is an AECOM trademark

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While Hong Kong has a long history of using underground space for commercial and public facilities, many of these projects were simply an extension of the building on top of them, with limited connection to the city around them. As urbanization continues its upward trend and our perceptions of space — personal and public — are constantly evolving, this use of layered technologies to explore the underground holds the potential to revolutionize urban liveability and create synergies with the surrounding urban context.

AECOM, commissioned by the Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government to undertake a study of underground development in an urban space, has explored ways of integrating the latest innovative technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR) and photogrammetry technologies with more widely used techniques in the industry, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and 3D spatial data to improve communication among the different parties involved in the planning and design process of underground space.

This novel combination of technologies has resulted in time savings, increased efficiency and cost benefits as well as greatly enhanced cooperation and the ability to virtually collaborate without the need for travel to a project site. On one project, outlined below, the use of photogrammetry technology to create a 3D model of the existing site saved three weeks time from the site survey, while sharing the site reality model with the designer for performing the parametric design saved another two weeks. Integrating various feature models into a visualization model for the Virtual Reality simulation saved another two weeks by amalgamating information to form a holistic review with different parties. Further, it saved client comment time as 3D visualizations facilitate the design detail and constraints of the project. Since the design team did not need to travel to Hong Kong, this saved around $100K HKD.

Particularly in high density cities, where land value is high and greenfield developments are hard to come by, the ability to map the underground more effectively and efficiently may open a world of possibilities.

This combination of technologies was first used to see how an urban park in Honk Kong that is close to a railway station could be better integrated to its surrounding area. The park is surrounded by densely developed multi-story buildings of mixed residential, commercial and retail use. For initial planning, AECOM and CEDD wanted to capture the existing environment in a 3D model to study how the park related to a wide range of facilities at ground level. But while there was 3D data on the buildings surrounding the park, there wasn’t any available 3D data on the park itself. That’s when we started going underground.

To build a more complete picture, we used Hong Kong government 3D spatial data[1] from the Lands Department to create that 3D model of the park then combined it with aerial photogrammetry technology. We shared the resulting model – complete with hard and soft landscaping and areas of interest within the park – with our partnering architecture design company based in Japan who had enough detail to be able to do many things that would usually have required travel to Hong Kong. This included measuring the space, seeing the topographic setting and the detail of the proposed site, as well as gaining an understanding of how the underground project would relate to the existing environment.

In the early stages of the design, a BIM model was created using the architectural design model which allowed all parties involved to communicate effectively and with a great level of detail. The BIM model was then combined with the site reality model (3D + photogrammetry) to create a Virtual Reality (VR) model that could be experienced on a computer screen. This virtual environment gave designers, planners, engineers, consultants and client representatives a realistic and life-sized place to walk and talk through the various aspects of the project.

After we layered on the virtual reality component, the resulting 1:1 representation of the project site also enabled 360-degree panoramas suitable for mobile VR devices used at in-person public consultations, as several mobile devices can be deployed at one venue. Panoramas can also be hosted on a website to reach a wider audience. The next level we’re exploring is a computer-connected VR device which would allow for more detailed design review and for users to interact with the virtual underground space design at a real-world scale. These representations could also be used in a virtual consultation room using AECOM’s interactive web-based tool.

Another benefit to this layering of technologies is that visualization models are not limited to the illustration of design details; data can be converted to other software to view shadow, noise and traffic impact assessments; 4D (BIM) simulation can also help to visualize the construction process.

This approach is unique because the novel integration of these innovative technologies has rarely been investigated within the framework of a single project and never-before used to explore underground space. Stakeholders often think only of BIM, but with an open mind this concept can be (and has been) replicated with different combinations of the various available technologies to suit the needs of other clients and projects.

Our study demonstrates the clear benefits for all parties involved in the planning and design of the conceptual scheme for underground space development in densely populated urban areas. Designers, planners, clients and consultants can visualize the components of a design at a 1:1 scale in ways that cannot be matched by 2D or 3D software alone. For the public, the realistic nature of the VR-based model brings the project and its full potential to life.

Learn more about this and other explorations of the potential of subterranean space to revolutionize the future urban experience in the new book Underground Cities: New Frontiers in Urban Living, introduced here.

AECOM would like to acknowledge the Head of Geotechnical Engineering Office and the Director of the Civil Engineering and Development Department, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, for the permission to publish.  The usage of material was authorized by ACUUS, the Associated Research Centers for the Urban Underground Space. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region does not accept responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or up-to-date nature of any reproduced versions of the material concern.

Unless otherwise indicated, the photographs found in this article are subject to copyright owned by the Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD).  Prior written consent is required for a third party who intends to reproduce, distribute, display or otherwise use such photographs in any way or for any purpose.  Such request for consent shall be addressed to the CEDD via email at enquiry@cedd.gov.hk

[1] 3D Spatial Data is a set of territory-wide digital 3D model data created to represent the shape, appearance and position of various types of ground features including building, infrastructure and terrain.

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The UK’s changing climate will have major implications for further and higher education institutions (FHEI) in the future. Predictions of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers pose direct risks to campus and community infrastructure, as well as historically and culturally significant buildings and artefacts. Furthermore, the effects are likely to influence all aspects of academic life from the delivery of teaching, research and examinations to student recruitment, as well as insurance premiums and the profitability of investments, and finally the wellbeing and safety of students, academics, and support staff.

The results will not always be catastrophic, but unless risks are systematically assessed institutions are driving blind. How will key assets and business processes stand up to a future of more extreme weather? New investments in infrastructure may be around for decades to come – how future-proof will they be? Now is the most cost-effective time to ask these questions and ensure the UK’s institutions are climate-ready.

Taking action doesn’t necessarily mean ‘reinventing the wheel’ or spending significant amounts of money. Universities and colleges already have well-established processes for managing risk – factoring in climate change simply means applying a different lens and set of expertise.

In order to support FHEIs adapt to climate change, AECOM has developed a guide in partnership with Environment Association of Universities and Colleges (EAUC) and Higher Education Business Continuity Network (HEBCoN). The guide, Adapting Universities and Colleges to a Changing Climate, provides a jumping-off point for climate resilience strategies.

In this article, we draw from the guide to make the case for early action, and show that a variety of approaches can be taken either by an in-house team or through external consultants.

What are the risks?

Under a changing climate, the UK will see weather that tends towards the extremes: heavy rainfall, heatwaves, drought, stronger storms. In the past few years, we have already witnessed the disruption and damage that extreme weather events can cause. In June 2012, the ‘Toon Monsoon’ dropped 50mm of rain in just two hours, causing flash-flooding that resulted in millions of pounds worth of damage. Newcastle University incurred over a million pounds in damage, demonstrating that its traditional infrastructure was unable to cope with events of that magnitude. Similarly, the ‘Beast from the East’ in 2018 caused the closure of Fife College for four days. Responding to events such as these can cause disruption to teaching, research, capital projects and income, and institutions have to cope with the subsequent repairs.

Although the more extreme weather will generate entirely new challenges for the sector, most critical is how climate change will become a ‘risk multiplier,’ exacerbating risks that are already of high priority.

These risks are far-reaching. Infrastructure and business continuity risks can cover a wide range of issues from increased flooding risk (as mentioned above) to the condition of sports pitches that have been adversely affected by drought.  Additional threats to health, safety and wellbeing of students may include extreme heat impacts, as well as increased risk to those students travelling to or from overseas.

FHE institutions’ responses to climate change are increasingly a factor in their Social Licence to operate. Reputational damage is a real possibility if the public perceives conduct in the face of climate change to be lacking, with flow-on effects for funding and recruitment.

Finally, the UK is fortunate to have an independent Committee on Climate Change, as well as additional legislation within devolved nations, which helps ensure a degree of continuity in terms of climate change remaining on the government policy agenda.  However, this means that if government policy continues to move towards climate resilient and low-carbon futures, universities and colleges who have lagged behind in adjusting their infrastructure and operations will be scrambling to catch up and meet any imposed targets.

Recommended steps

Every organisation will be at a different place in the process of adapting to climate change. Therefore, as a first step, we have devised three milestones as part of a climate readiness self-assessment, namely: establishing the case for action; identifying risk and opportunities; and finally executing adaptation strategies.

By identifying the key risks, FHEIs can make the case to senior leaders as to the importance of proactively adapting and can then develop targeted solutions to address these risks.

Organisations may choose to employ an external consultant – and there are advantages to this approach, particularly if there is a lack of in-house skills or resources.  Consultants bring an objective perspective on the organisation’s risk profile and level of resilience, which may be especially helpful when there is a major pipeline of investments that could benefit from more detailed input.

However, for those that may not have the capacity or immediate need to draw on external consultant for detailed support, our guidance document provides a simple set of steps and tools to begin integrating or expanding ongoing climate resilience activities.

Effective climate adaptation planning requires the right mixture of skills and institutional knowledge though it is not necessary to be a confident and experienced adaptation practitioner to begin strengthening the resilience of an organisation to climate change. For example, its possible that FHEIs can use existing their organisational resilience framework to develop a climate change adaptation plan (CCAP). The steps involved are:

1/Build a project team with appropriate competencies and knowledge – the objective of this step is to assemble the necessary competencies and knowledge needed to undertake a CCAP process.

2/Define scope: Initial Business Impact Analysis (BIA) – the objective of this step is to understand what is fundamentally important to the organisation (i.e. its critical functions)

3/Identify significant impacts: product and service BIA – determine specific risks to critical functions over different time horizons, incorporating the effects of climate change

4/Present BIA output as a risk register – summarise BIA findings in a format that can be used to inform future decision-making

5/Determine risk appetite – assess the impacts in the risk register to determine the institution’s willingness or reluctance to tolerate risk

6/Identify appropriate adaptation approaches – using the established risk appetite, determine the appropriate adaptation actions

7/Develop Climate Change Adaptation Plan – a concise climate change adaptation plan with indicative timelines, implementation strategies, and key performance indicators to monitor progress.

Broadly, there are three types of interventions that FHEIs can take to adapt to climate change. These occur in three ways:

• Reducing exposure: This means ensuring that key activities, resources and assets (economic, social, cultural and environmental) are located out of harm’s way. This can mean redirecting a hazard (e.g. by constructing a sea wall) or moving things of value to another location (e.g. relocating computer servers or document archives from a flood-exposed basement).
• Reducing sensitivity: Sometimes it is not practical to eliminate exposure to a risk. In such cases, measures can be taken to reduce susceptibility to harm.
• Increasing adaptive capacity: This simply means increasing the ability to cope with and adjust to change. This can be done by ensuring that there is a Plan B, such as backup power should a storm or heatwave result in an electricity outage.

Look at the opportunities as well

Climate change is definitely not a good news story, but for agile organisations it does present opportunities. For example, climate change has opened up a plethora of research opportunities, teaching programmes, and funding opportunities for universities and colleges. Areas of focus include the impact of climate change on food systems, hydrology, renewable energy engineering and policy, migration and security studies, and governance, among many others. Many FHE institutions have already harnessed these opportunities but now have a chance to expand them.

Furthermore, as the majority of the UK public supports urgent action on climate change, universities and colleges have the chance to position themselves as exemplars in this field by implementing bold climate-resilient practices within their own assets and operations to remain able to deliver world-leading teaching and research into the future.

The post How to adapt universities and colleges to a changing climate appeared first on Without Limits.

Data centers are where the demands of digitalization and climate change collide. Organizations need new digital infrastructure to process and store the increasing amount of data they are generating – and they need it fast. But it is also necessary for that infrastructure to have as little impact as possible on the environment, and to run for decades despite a changing climate.

Technology company Cisco forecasts that annual data traffic will double to 4.8 zettabytes (4.8 trillion gigabytes) by 2022 – during which time more data will be crossing global networks than in the 30-plus years since the creation of the internet! But as demand for data centers and the cloud computing services they support increases, so does the pressure – environmental, financial and regulatory – to develop them in a sustainable way.

In this article, we examine the four elements we believe are key to improving data center sustainability, all of which will be in much sharper focus now that coronavirus has accelerated the shift to remote working and living, namely:

1. efficient use of power
2. renewable energy sources
3. water and waste management
4. resilience to extreme weather events.

Time to adapt

Handling, transferring and storing the growing volumes of data produced by digitalization is very power intensive. In 2017, data centers in the US alone used more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, equal to the output of 34 power plants of 500 megawatts (MW) each. Furthermore, keeping servers cool so that they operate as efficiently as possible requires huge volumes of water.

The technology giants who rely most heavily on data centers have set themselves ambitious renewable energy targets. For example, Facebook first committed to 100 percent renewable energy in 2011, followed by Apple and Google in 2012, and Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2014. For these hyperscalers who dominate the cloud services market, as well as data-center investors and co-location companies (colos) – who rent server space to third-party companies – making data centers more sustainable will cut their costs and enable them to meet their own carbon emissions targets, as well as government-imposed ones.

Efficiency – saving money, cutting carbon

Minimizing the power needed to run a data center is the best way to reduce its environmental impact and running costs.

Energy losses through the data center’s cooling system can account for a significant percentage of the total power demand. A data center’s power usage efficiency (PUE) metric is calculated by dividing the total power consumed by the power used solely for computing. The closer that ratio is to 1.0, the more efficient the system. For example, a data center that needs 25MW to run its IT equipment and has a PUE of 1.67 (the industry average in 2019) would need nearly 42MW of total power to operate.

By comparison, Google’s most efficient data centers are running at PUEs closer to 1.1 – at which level, a 25MW IT load would require only 27.5MW total power. Assuming a price for power of $0.05/kWh, that difference in PUE would result in annual savings of more than $6million – or a total $94million over a 15-year lease.

This also has implications for emissions. If the two data centers in the above example were using coal-fired power from the grid, the more efficient data center would save the equivalent of 90,000 tons of CO₂ emissions a year.

Careful attention to temperature, unnecessary server usage and power storage dynamics are relatively low-cost ways to make data centers more energy efficient. Data centers use about 40 percent of their energy to keep servers cool. Solutions to improve efficiency include passive cooling (a system that ensures hot and chilled air do not mix) as well as immersive liquid cooling, where servers are immersed in a rack filled with coolant that can have more than a thousand times the heat capacity of air. The coolant absorbs the heat from the servers and is then removed from the rack.

However, recent research suggests that more than a quarter of servers in US data centers are ‘zombies’ – drawing power, but no longer being used for computing. New software solutions can locate them and make it easier to shut them down without affecting active operations.

In addition, further power savings can be made with the latest uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems that data centers can use to maximize reliability.

Renewable energy

Data center users and colos have led the way on renewable energy commitments, and tech companies are increasingly supporting the construction of new renewable energy within their own utility districts.

The inevitable next step in this process is for tech companies and corporate data-center users to build their own renewable capacity, either right at their data center sites or within their utility service areas. AWS is investing directly in new wind farms in the US and Europe, including a new 91.2MW facility off the coast of Donegal, Ireland, to serve its data centers around Dublin. Solar is also a consideration for many companies if their locations are viable.

Whereas both wind and solar are reliant on the weather, tidal power is emerging as more reliable alternative. The predictability of tidal power means that the necessary energy storage systems can be sized effectively and economically.

Water management

The volume of water required to cool servers has made water management and recycling a top priority for data-center operators. For example, a 15MW data center can soak up more than 360,000 gallons of water a day. Water is not only a direct cost but used at such a scale can be a burden on local infrastructure and is an increasingly scarce global commodity.

As a result, data-center designers are being creative. In Finland, Google’s Hamina data center draws seawater from the Gulf of Finland for cooling. Rainwater can also be captured and stored for use in evaporative cooling systems.

Furthermore, wastewater can be a useful output – in the city of Umatilla, Oregon, there are plans to send wastewater from Amazon’s local data centers to irrigate nearby agricultural land.

Resilience – floods, fire and drought are the reality of climate change

In order to ensure reliability, data-center designers and operators need to take climate change and its effects into account right from the start of the asset creation process. Extreme weather events such as flooding, droughts and lightning strikes caused by more frequent storms could be catastrophic. The choice of site must therefore consider the likelihood of increased flooding or droughts that could put essential water supplies at risk.

The digital revolution, climate change and coronavirus have changed the way we live and work, and digital infrastructure needs to adapt. Data centers should lead the way in the adoption of clean, sustainable technology, driving advances that directly benefit societies by limiting the use of finite resources and driving down the cost of data storage and processing.

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