The RICS Sustainability Report 2022 from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors collates sentiment from nearly 4,000 chartered surveyors, around 1200 of which are from the UK.
While in commercial property the market is driving sustainability improvements – tenants and buyers will pay more for a building with lower energy bills – in construction that market impetus is not so evident.
Survey respondents reported that construction professionals in the UK are beginning to embrace digital tools and technologies to complete sustainability-related analysis for construction projects – predominantly to assess energy needs and costs – but they are less likely to use these tools to reduce embodied carbon or to measure the impact on biodiversity. 47% of respondents in the UK reported that digital tools and processes were used to complete sustainability assessments on less than half or none of their projects. Across mainland Europe, 40% of respondents said that digital tools and processes were used to complete sustainability assessments on less than half or none of their projects, suggesting that the UK is falling behind its neighbours.
This year’s RICS Sustainability Report also indicates that there is not much carbon measuring going on: 76% of construction surveyors in the UK said that they make no operational measurement of carbon emissions on projects. (The response was much the same for mainland Europe.) With more than half of the UK respondents also saying that they don’t measure embodied carbon, even for those that do, less than 14% use it to select the materials they use in their project.
When probed on the barriers to reducing carbon emissions, 38% identified both the lack of established/adopted standards, guidance and tools and the high costs/low availability of low-carbon products as the fundamental issues. Alongside this, contributors also mentioned cultural issues and established practices as a challenge.
RICS sustainability analyst Kisa Zehra commented: “It is of benefit to all to embrace climate strategy, and we must reduce our impact as the built environment. Behaviour change is happening, with higher rents and prices being seen for the more desirable sustainable properties, and climate risk assessments by investors on their built assets rising across the globe. But, measuring all forms of carbon, is also critical to the changes we need to see from the built environment.”
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