Today (1 November), CECA Wales, representing Wales’s civil engineering contractors, and ACE for consulting engineers, publish a joint report with the County Surveyors Society (CSS) Cymru which sets out a sector Action Plan to decarbonise infrastructure in Wales.
Ahead of COP26, the report, Decarbonising Our Infrastructure, addresses some of the barriers to change facing the sector whilst also setting out practical steps to drive the sector forward to meet the challenges of climate change.
Short term funding, an “embedded culture of lowest price procurement” across the public sector, poor low carbon knowledge base in the sector as well as lack of innovation are all identified as current barriers the sector faces when it comes to decarbonisation.
Moving forward, the sector has set out an Action Plan for the future, based around 4 key themes:
- Justification – ensuring that carbon performance is embedded in investment justification models
- Procurement – ensuring that procurement processes reflect carbon performance
- Materials and technology – ensuring that the choice of materials and technologies reflects carbon performance
- Business Development – supporting businesses towards a zero carbon future.
On the publication of the Action Plan, Ed Evans, Director of CECA Wales said, “As we move into a new world dominated by concerns over climate change, the role, and carbon impact, of our infrastructure becomes evermore critical.
“To achieve change, leadership across Wales’ public and private sectors is crucial, both locally and nationally, to fundamentally rethink the way we promote, fund and deliver our infrastructure priorities. The Action Plan published today outlines how we can practically, decarbonise our industry. We’ll be taking this report to Governments at all levels and using this report to effect change across our sector.”
Welcoming the report, the Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters MS said, “If we’re to reach our NetZero target by 2050 we need to do more in the next ten years than we have done in the last thirty which means making some difficult and unpopular choices. As a significant contributor to emission levels, transport must play its part and our transport strategy – Llwybr Newydd, sets out our ambitious vision for transport in Wales to achieve our climate change commitments and safeguard future generations.
“Of course a key part of this work involves working closely with the industry to ensure that we make the right investments in our transport system so that we can tackle the climate emergency as one.”
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