Jurriaan van Stigt
"Tomorrow we will really start exercising." Everyone knows that feeling. But what if your heart stops next week? Then tomorrow is too late. It's the same with CO₂ in construction: we build today, not in 2075. And the emissions from today count now towards the Paris budget.
Last month, three studies were published that together tell one story: CO₂ is the elephant in the room, but it matters greatly which CO₂ and when we emit it. The operational emissions - energy, mobility, consumption - can still be adjusted over time. Electrification, behavioral change, clean grids: these are long-term processes, but they remain flexible.
The embodied carbon, on the other hand - the CO₂ in soil, foundations, parking garages, steel, and concrete - is accounted for now. At the moment we build. In the decade in which emissions must be reduced the most according to Paris. And once it's in the ground, you can't design it away.
So friends - Rients, Martin, Cody, Reimar, Marco, Tim - let's not debate whether we should build or densify, but how. Because location, density, transformation versus new construction, material choice, and parking are not minor choices. They directly determine how many tons of CO₂ we will lock in this decade.
Smart densification, reuse, less paving, hybrid constructions, no standard parking garages: these are not ideological wishes but hard climate levers. Turning this around now means preventing the need to compensate for what we pour into the ground today.
So let reports not remain just reports. Come up with a practical approach, because the gym won't wait until next week. The climate clock is ticking now. And anyone who wants to start tomorrow is already behind the facts today.