Laudes x Dark Matter Labs: A just transition of Europe’s built environment (Part 1)
#BendNotBreak
In this series of 4 blogs we will explore the emerging work that we are undertaking in partnership with Laudes Foundation. The overall goal of the collaboration is to look with fresh eyes at the challenges and opportunities presented by an equitable decarbonisation of Europe’s land and buildings. A major component of this journey is to identify innovative individuals and organisations who are working in this space. For Laudes, building and supporting a community of changemakers who are working to achieve outcomes such as fair work and green, affordable housing is a critical element of the transition ahead. We hope that these first thoughts will prompt discussions and questions and we would welcome your views and critiques. Please do get in touch if you would like to contribute.
Blog 1 (of 4): Considering the fundamental ecological, physical and social constraints of the Built Environment
Applying a new conceptual filter to old challenges
The reality is a kaleidoscope of upstream factors and if we fail to address a single one then there is a real danger that we fail at everything.
If you are reading this blog then you almost certainly understand how to think in terms of systems. Ideas such as looking upstream of the crises to identify root causes and the interconnected nature of the world’s wicked problems will be familiar. You probably have a particular area of interest or expertise. You might be working on education because you sense that if we could encourage a new generation of systems thinkers then our future would be transformed. Or you might be certain that the core problem is the embedded growth obligation of our economic system. Perhaps your focus is on biodiversity and preserving life’s ecosystems, because without these the economy and education are both meaningless. In these (and many other) convictions we would agree. Each is arguably ‘the’ underlying cause and each requires a response. The reality is a kaleidoscope of upstream factors and if we fail to address a single one then there is a real danger that we fail at everything. Following this logic, it seems that we need an ecology of responses rather than multiple upstream solutions.
This kind of framing can make us feel individually powerless but if we can allow ourselves to lean into the uncertainty and complexity of what is unfolding, then new opportunities surface. An alternative frame is to shift our focus from trying to enact solutions (for example, a Europe wide retrofit rollout or building a certain number of green homes) and to think instead about the dominant forces that are acting on the sector. What do these trends mean in terms of the constraints we must operate within and around? An obvious example is the current spike in electricity prices which is putting enormous pressure on household budgets. If prices are set to rise into the future, will it even be viable to achieve our current comfort levels of heating and cooling by electrifying the existing infrastructure? Even if energy prices fall, existing global mineral reserves are insufficient to manufacture even one generation of renewable technology units (EV’s, H-cells, batteries, wind turbines and solar panels)¹.
With this in mind, we would like to propose a conceptual tool to help think through the constraints and identify strategies that could help to navigate them. Imagine an image filter that you apply to a familiar landscape. The basic features are unchanged, but the perception is altered so that some objects are in sharper relief and others are hardly visible. Or perhaps like the artist Oliver Jeffers, you turn the image (and the political motivations behind it) on its head to expose a different story. What do you notice that you didn’t consider before? If this type of perspective shift related to the operating space in which you work rather than to a nondescript image, how would you respond? Would it feel exciting, threatening, opaque or simply more than you have time for this week?
We, like many of you, have considered the cascading and multiplying threats of the 21st Century across many aspects of our work. After a wide review of the literature and some spirited dialogues (both internal and external) we have narrowed these trends down to four bottleneck filters; factors that we consider to be the most significant in analysing the constraints of Europe’s built environment decarbonisation challenge. These filters are intended as thought prompts rather than definitive conclusions and we are curious to hear how they sit with you. Do any of them intuitively ring true or do you think we are missing some fundamental elements? Is this kind of framing useful or do you view it as an unnecessary distraction?
The constraints: 4 bottlenecks that will shape the future of Europe’s built environment
The scope and scale of the transition ahead is unprecedented in terms of the human, physical and financial resources that will be required. In the EU, it is estimated that retrofitting the existing building stock will demand an estimated EUR 275 billion of additional investments per year to achieve EU climate targets by 2030². Despite the scale of this requirement, raising and managing this level of financial investment will only be part of the challenge.
We would therefore like to invite you to think about four additional constraints and how they apply to the work you are doing at the moment. How might they shape the strategies, design options and pathways that you think will be optimal for the transition of the built environment? What are you doing already that recognises and addresses these converging limitations? What might you need to lean further into or away from?
1. Labour constraints
Labour shortages combined with an insufficiently skilled and ageing workforce, means that resourcing sustainable building activities (for both modernisation and construction) is already a major problem for the building sector³. If we don’t make this sector more engaging and inclusive, we will simply not attract the volume or quality of labour required. This dynamic will be further complicated by migration patterns that will not necessarily correlate to labour needs (in timeframe or geographical spread). Climate and war refugees will not neatly arrive in areas earmarked for planned renovations or green building programmes. Even if they did, there will be other escalating labour priorities such as providing care or improving food security. As these pressures intensify it is likely that the allocation of labour to building renovation versus other critical missions will become a significant strategic issue.
To add fuel to the fire, across much of Europe, the shift from rural to urban areas is intensifying (in Romania and Slovenia for example the vacancy rate of dwellings in rural areas exceeds 20%⁴). If these and other transitioning geographies around the world continue to urbanise using modern technologies, then the pressures on carbon, material and energy budgets will be far greater than currently estimated.
2. The energy crisis
The labour constraints above will be further accentuated by a reduction in the so-called ‘fossil workers’ who have boosted our productivity over the last century. Globally we currently use around 100 million barrels of oil per day (c. 36 billion barrels per year) but this resource is becoming harder and more expensive to obtain, even if we put aside the carbon considerations. To put this into perspective, one barrel of oil is equivalent to the amount of physical labour that a human can produce in 4.5 years⁵. The annual consumption of around 8 billion humans is therefore 4.5 barrels per person (36bn barrels divided by 8bn humans) which equates to 20 years of equivalent human labour per person (4.5 barrels * 4.5 years = 20 years). This is an extraordinary statistic that has profound implications for our future living standards.
The renewable energy sector is growing rapidly but still only represents around 11% of global energy consumption⁶. Since 2000, the use of electricity by the building sector has increased almost five times faster than the corresponding improvements in the decarbonisation of the electricity generation⁷. Unless we shrink other areas of the economy the additional energy requirements of building decarbonisation may not even be possible within our current economic system.
3. The material crisis
This brings us onto the material crisis where energy shortages will collide with a requirement to power the mining of staggering quantities of additional materials. Take copper for example, which is an essential component for retrofitting⁸. Prior to 2020, humanity mined 700 million tons of copper back to 4,000 BC, but to keep up with current copper demand (excluding additional requirements from decarbonisation or electrification) we will need to mine that volume in the next 22 years i.e. we will compress 6,000 years of extraction into just 22⁹.
Threaded through this bottleneck are geopolitical tensions that will almost certainly further intensify material resource pressures. Turkey for example, currently sources 35% of its aluminium (which is a critical building material) from Russia¹⁰. Other minerals used in construction (for example nickel as a component of stainless steel) are starting to be extracted from the deep sea beds of the global ocean. Here too tensions are rising as the frontiers of extraction expand, with China holding more contracts issued by the International Seabed Authority than any other country.
4. Ecological dynamics
In 2021, the Dasgupta review on the economics of biodiversity was commissioned by the UK Treasury and concluded that ‘we are currently damaging it [the natural world] so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown’. Declining biodiversity levels are a tragedy in their own right but without careful management will also limit the availability of biomaterials for green building technologies. Added to this are the intensifying severe weather patterns that will require huge improvements in the resilience of buildings, thus putting further pressure on natural stocks. If we aspire to reconfigure the built environment using green materials we must first reconceive the relationship between our buildings and living resources such as timber. Imagine a future where the shape and quantity of our buildings must be defined by the regenerative potential of our forests, rather than the other way around.
To put the above into context of the built environment, we did some rough calculations based on the global 96% carbon emission reduction requirement to stay within planetary boundaries and a per capita allocation of that budget per country¹¹. Our assumptions were also based on the current allocations of carbon to the construction industry in Europe (39% overall and 11% to pure construction) and an average emission figure of c.50 tonnes of carbon per new build. Using these high level figures, we estimate that the maximum number of houses that can be built within the carbon budget per year, would be around 176,000 for the whole of Europe and just 15,000 for the UK. To be clear, this is before we consider climate reparation budgets which will further restrict that number. In the context of 700,000 people being reported homeless per day in Europe¹² and an annual target of 400,000 new homes to be built in Germany alone, these numbers are shocking.
Strategies and design options: flipping our perspective to meet the future halfway
Building on the bottlenecks above we have been thinking through strategies that are either implied or invited by these constraints. This is our equivalent of drawing the map upside down and re-evaluating how to navigate the changing landscape. There are many possibilities; some are already being used to triage existing issues, some are quietly coalescing to power the next generation of responses, some are still conceptual. The following prompts summarise the strategic design principles that we have been thinking about:
Consider a no (or low) build future for Europe: There is no question that people need safe, green homes but can we realistically and ethically plan to build and renovate them with resource and energy pressures escalating? If we can’t build the required homes then we will need to intensify our use of the existing building stock. This could include a radical repurposing of Europe’s vacant buildings (including the 16% of homes that are currently unoccupied¹³) and reconfiguring how we equitably share space.
Embrace low-tech dematerialisation: If we can’t mine or recycle the materials needed we will simply need to use less of them. Some of these resource savings may come from technological improvements, but we can also look at strategies that simplify our lifestyles? Do we really need to keep our houses at 20 degrees year round? Could we instead move to zonal heating where areas of the building are subdivided into smaller compartments for heating according to seasons? For example, it might be possible to think about radiant heating panels for targeted heat requirements such as over a work desk.
Think upstream of the solutions as well of the problems: We might think of plentiful materials with low levels of embodied carbon as providing uncontroversial solutions, but what if we widen the boundary of our risk assessments? For example, bamboo is considered to be a low-carbon material with strong mechanical qualities, but without careful management bamboo invasion can negatively impact native plant diversity¹⁴. Seeking multiple perspectives on any response being proposed will be essential if we are to prevent today’s solutions from becoming tomorrow’s escalation pathways.
Embed a culture of care: The working conditions and social status of those who are currently working in the industry is worrying. In 2020, more than 20% of fatal work accidents in the EU occurred within the construction industry¹⁵. In the UK, the Chartered Institute of Building has recently reported that ‘Mental ill-health is a silent crisis within the construction industry’, with male construction workers three times more likely to die from suicide than the national average. These are deeply disturbing statistics on a human level that fuel the subliminal narratives that percolate into every decision. How can we expect a worker appraising a development project to meaningfully embrace wellbeing outcomes, when their lived reality of achieving financial targets is in such stark contrast?
Re-common housing as a universal basic service: Since the 2008 financial crisis investor-owned housing in Europe has increased by 700 percent¹⁶. On average across Europe 18% of dwellings are overcrowded, 35% are under occupied¹⁷ and 16% are not occupied at all¹⁸. The situation is so absurd that a group of activists in Brussels have created an entirely fictional district (Saint-Vide-Leegbeek) to highlight the 6.5m m2 and 30,000 units of empty properties in the city alone. Housing cannot legitimately remain subject to price speculation and wealth protection in a fair and sustainable future. How could the narrative of housing as an asset (together with the financial practices around it) be reframed, to spark a wide-scale public debate about what housing means in a resource constrained future?
Ignite imaginative thinking: What if an alternative resource-light architecture is predominantly constrained by a failure of our collective imagination rather than by a lack of viable alternatives? After Covid restrictions were lifted in Europe, many people expressed their wish not to return to their old patterns of living and working. This is obviously a dramatic example but does highlight the power of people viscerally experiencing alternative ways of living, in terms of shifting value perceptions. This is an idea being playful explored by the New European Bauhaus which invites Europe’s citizens to co-create a ‘sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls’.
Build the politics of transition: Many of the required strategies and capabilities will not be politically acceptable at present but everyday politics will be a powerful driver in meeting the future halfway. How for example would our responses differ if citizens felt empowered to shape and design their own futures? Would residents of a district or city accept skyrocketing levels of inequality and homelessness if they felt there were realistic alternatives? How would working conditions change if organisations agreed to operate under a revocable social licence, that was periodically audited by a random selection of local stakeholders?
Move on from impossible: If the transitions we were expecting are moving further out of reach then we must stop chasing the impossible and think about responding to the difficult. Taking retrofit as an example, if the materials and energy will not be available to insulate the entirety of Europe’s housing stock, then perhaps we can also create houses within houses using tent-like removable heat capture. Similarly, if we cannot mine the minerals of choice to power our heat pumps, then we will need to start investing in alternative battery technologies powered by plentiful elements such as sodium and fluoride.
Strategies Xn : Whilst we are happy to share our thinking, we feel strongly that our work will only be robust and meaningful if we begin building on it in community with Laudes and the wider network of built environment practitioners. This is an evolving area and we are committed to holding time and space within it to hear and support your ideas.
Closing thoughts
In a collaborative workshop between DML and Laudes in December 2022, we discussed the 4-filter constraint framework described above. One concern that was raised was that inequality seemed to be a fundamental omission. If we are applying the filter of labour then thinking through the inequality implications of any goal or strategy would also seem important. Spiralling inequality is undisputedly a destructive and undesirable dynamic in our current socio-economic system. It should and absolutely must be addressed. However, we see this as a structural constraint of the wider economic system in which the built environment is nested, rather than as a specific barrier to inclusive decarbonisation strategies. We will explore and unpack this distinction in our next blog.
Finally, this initiative will be hollow without input from the people working towards these common goals. Our wish is to amplify your voices, to learn from you and critically to take your feedback on board to improve our own work. All thoughts, questions, critiques and suggestions are warmly welcomed.
The Dark Matter project team who co-authored this blog are Emily Harris (emily@darkmatterlabs.org), Aleksander Nowak (Aleks@darkmatterlabs.org), Vlad Afanasiev (vlad@darkmatterlabs.org) and Indy Johar (indy@darkmatterlabs.org)
References:
[1] https://www.simonmichaux.com/
[2] https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficient-buildings/renovation-wave_en
[4] https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HM1-1-Housing-stock-and-construction.pdf
[5] This is based on performing 40 hours of physical work per week all year at an average output of 600 watt-hours. The analysis is based on Dr Nate Hagen’s research https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
[6] https://www.c2es.org/content/renewable-energy/
[7] https://www.iea.org/reports/the-critical-role-of-buildings
[8] https://copperalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/PR-Climate_CRNW.pdf
[9] https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/49-simon-michaux
[10] https://www.aluminas.ru/upload/iblock/0cc/Green-agenda_2.-Erol-Metin-TALSAD.pdf
[11] Based on Planetary Boundary studies to reach the IPCC targets.
[13] https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/SYSTEMIQ-urban-spaces.pdf
[14] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989419304111
[15] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Accidents_at_work_statistics
[16] https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/affordable-housing-is-a-human-right/
[17] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20180612-1
[18] https://www.feantsa.org/en/report/2016/09/11/feantsa-fap-report-filling-vacancie
