Shaping zero: responding to the infrastructure challenge

Alistair Kean, environmental director at COWI, explores how engineers can help lay the path towards net zero

The inaugural address to members of the Institute of Civil Engineers from incoming President, Rachel Skinner, was stark. “The way we, as civil engineers, have planned, designed, constructed and operate our infrastructure systems have been part of the (climate change) problem,” she said. “It hasn’t been intentional but it’s time to recognise that we need to do things differently.”

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From the address, what was clear is the outsized role that civil engineers will play in society’s response to climate change. The carbon impact of the infrastructure that we create is twofold; firstly, created by the design, materials and construction choices we make, and secondly through the behaviours that we enable – be they energy, transport, buildings, water, waste or digital. Altogether it means that 70 per cent of carbon emissions can be traced back to infrastructure.