Transcriber: Renato Costa Reviewer: Emma Gon
My name’s Kent Jackson, and I’m an architect.
And I wanted to come here today to talk to you about our race to net zero.
But as I look around the room, I just want to be asking everyone,
does anyone feel like we’re really racing to net zero?
We’ve been led to believe that if we continue to live,
work and build on our planet,
just the way that we always have done, that by simply planting trees,
it will be enough to offset the damage that we are creating.
But I'm going to tell you today,
this is one of the greatest fallacies of our time.
When we look outside, every building that we see is emitting carbon.
The building that we’re in here today,
it’s almost been emitting carbon for 100 years.
But I'm not here to pass blame on the past generation.
It’s us. We know, we know what causes climate change,
yet we’re not changing the ways
in which we can preserve our planet for future generations.
And as we can see now, your generation.
So where could we start? Why don’t we start with our cities?
Our cities are quite fascinating
because they only occupy 3% of our Earth’s surface.
Yet they host 50% of the world’s population.
But maybe rather surprisingly,
they also contribute to 75% of our world carbon emissions.
And if we could just stop our cities from emitting so much carbon,
and doing more damage to our planet,
that can be one of the greatest copportunities
we would have to combat climate change.
And finding this answer is going to be really important.
Because going forward, we know that the world population
is predicted to grow to a further 2.1 billion by the year 2050.
And we know that most of this population growth
is going to be happening in our cities.
And this increase in population will mean that we're going to have to double
the amount of built area on our planet by the year 2060.
And this is going to mean that our cities are, all of a sudden,
going to start occupying more of our Earth’s surface.
But in very simple terms, we’re going to be doubling
the amount of carbon that we currently are today by 2060.
And to give you an idea of what this growth might look like,
we would be building a city like London every two months for the next 40 years.
Let's just pause on that for a second.
All those cranes that we see out in our cities when we look around
don’t quite know what we’re getting up to,
it means if you haven’t done the math,
we’re going to be building 240 cities the size of London by the year 2060.
But we know it doesn't quite work that way.
Yes, there will be cities that we've never heard of before, but in actual fact,
the cities that you and I live in are going to grow at a much faster rate.
And I just want to be clear, I’m not saying that cities are bad.
In fact, I'm telling you, cities are great.
There's a real strength in our cities.
But we actually really need to know the impact
when we talk about urbanization and densification
and the growth of our cities.
The less impact that our cities could make,
the better chance our planet will be able to adapt
and preserve its natural resources.
So the problem is by using trees to offset our carbon,
is that one tree takes a human lifetime to mature
and effectively be able to sequester carbon.
And that one tree and what it’s able to sequester in its lifetime,
is actually only a very small fraction
of what you and I are going to emit in just one year.
And if those two issues aren’t concerning enough,
even if we could plant all of these trees
that we need to plant to offset our carbon,
we don’t have enough space on the Earth’s surface
to actually plant all of these trees.
So that’s the fallacy.
If we could just change the way
that we interact with our cities and our buildings,
all of us here could be part of the solution
in coming to a carbon negative future.
With the modernization of our cities,
many people have benefited with a greater quality of life.
We have better transport, we have better jobs,
better medical facilities, I could go on and on.
But as we understand our planet better,
it’s also saying that these advancements have caused the detriment of our planet.
But knowing that our cities are beneficial to so many,
what if they could be part of that solution?
Instead of causing 75% of the world’s carbon emissions,
what if our cities and buildings could act like a forest?
I want you to think of this forest and a tree in that forest.
And imagine if a building in your city could act like that tree.
Or if the building we’re in today or maybe it was a tall building
when you past on the way here,
could all act like that tree.
Like a sequoia, one of the biggest trees in the world.
We could call them urban sequoias,
where that one building was able to remove carbon from the atmosphere
and become carbon negative.
Where buildings could be seen doing more good than they are harm.
It should be obvious, but there is no silver bullet to climate change.
We can't wait here and look for a vaccine to solve our climate change.
Instead, by using a series of existing technologies,
I would like to be able to illustrate to you
how we can take a series of incremental steps
and really think about how our buildings become carbon negative.
And how we can take that one single urban sequoia
and multiply it into a series of buildings
to grow our cities in the future.
It might not be apparent to all of you, but our tallest buildings,
they actually create the most amount of carbon.
Should make sense when we think about it,
they require more material, they have more inhabitants,
more lights to turn on, and so on and so on.
But if I use a tall building as an example,
just by optimizing the building form,
we could reduce material and our carbon emissions by 15%
If we were able to build predominantly with prefabricated or modular components,
we could reduce material waste and we could be more efficient in construction
and further reduce our carbon emissions by another 15%
If we could just think of our buildings
as a living organism, much like that of a tree,
and we could use systems that were natural
and technological and be more self-sufficient,
we could reduce 30% carbon emissions.
As builders and designers, we just become too reliant
on concrete and steel to build our cities and our buildings.
We can’t do what’s easy anymore.
We’re going to have to use new technologies
and we’re going to use more natural materials.
We have the ability today to use materials
that absorb and sequester carbon,
such as timber, bio-based concrete and masonry.
By embracing these advancements,
we could reduce our embedded carbon by 50%
We could also turn our buildings into a form of energy,
and we could reduce our whole life carbon by 25%
just by thinking about the building’s envelope.
We could use bio reactive algae filled facades and photovoltaics.
If we were to just reconsider how air moves through a building,
we would be able to absorb carbon in our buildings
and be able to reduce carbon emissions by 75%
just through direct air capture and very similar to that of a tree.
Through these series of collective applications where we could leverage
new and existing technologies that we already have access to,
we could save 210% of carbon emissions,
making all of our buildings in the future carbon negative.
In addition to being carbon negative,
we can breathe life back into our buildings.
We could actually make them healthier. The air could be cleaner.
And our cities would be more livable.
Better yet, imagine if we could take all of this carbon
that we’re collecting from all the buildings
and be able to put it in a new infrastructure network
and create a new carbon economy for all of our cities in the future.
If we could just refocus the way we thought about design,
and we could change the way
that we operate and construct our buildings,
we wouldn’t have to be as concerned as we are
with doubling the area on the planet.
So about that fallacy that I spoke about earlier,
about all those trees, we have a choice to make today.
We can either continue to build the way
that we always have and we would have to, like,
plant more trees than we actually have the physical space for,
or if all of our buildings could be urban sequoias
where we’re able to sequester carbon,
our planet could save 1.3 billion tons of carbon each year.
And this would be the same as if we planted over 60 billion trees each year,
and this would cover almost all of Europe in trees.
So let’s agree not to squander this opportunity, let’s sequester it.
Thank you.
(Applause)