Quantifying Material Use, Emissions, and the Scale of Decarbonisation

Part 5 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, by Tom Ackers

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Globally, the built environment’s greenhouse gas emissions comprise those from construction, and those from the operational use of buildings (for electricity, heating and cooling, cooking, etc).

By weight, building and infrastructure construction creates by far the largest “stock” of materials, globally.

The Heidelberg cement factory, Germany. Source: Heritage calling / Creative Commons

In this part, I look at the historical growth in material stocks (section 5.1); the maintenance and replacement of these stocks (section 5.2); how these stocks have accumulated in different countries (section 5.3); and then the impact of land use on emissions (section 5.4). After that I then turn to the present state of man-made emissions in the built environment (section 5.5). Finally, I outline what I see as the big issues raised by decarbonisation (section 5.6).

5.1. A history of material stocks

Much of the greenhouse gases emitted in the history of the fossil economy is embedded in material stocks of metals, building materials and waste. To quantify the emissions, we need to quantify the scale of these material stocks and the flows that produced them. To do so I will draw on work by a team of researchers mostly based at the Vienna Institute of Social Ecology.

A series of studies shows that, globally, about 1000 billion tonnes (1000 Gt) of physical materials are embedded in buildings and infrastructure. One such study, published in Nature in 2020, was reported with the headline: “Human-made materials now outweigh Earth’s entire biomass”.[1]

The China shock

Part 4 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, by Tom Ackers

Download the whole series as a PDF here

The most dramatic example in history of production-based expansions in the built environment have taken place in China.

Since 1978, the Chinese economy has grown at around 10% per annum, as measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). Under Deng Xiaoping, the opening of the economy, and market reforms, coupled with massive state interventions, have brought large foreign capital inflows.

Construction workers in Beijing in 2013. Photo: Joe Tymczyszyn at Flickr / Creative Commons

With its build-out in industrial and manufacturing capacity, rising incomes have drawn people to cities, spurring urban enlargement. Economic growth has therefore been the carrot for mass rural-urban migration; forced ejections by private enclosures of the countryside have been the stick – such that China’s rate of urban population growth has outpaced that of its population as a whole.

There has also been considerable urbanisation of the countryside “in situ”, either through the explosive growth of small towns, or the growth of whole cities from scratch. China has escaped both the “shock therapy” experienced by Russia in the 1990s, and other forms of structural adjustment that pushed poor regions to the wall.

China’s coal economy today is several orders of magnitude larger than the UK’s was in the 19th century. On a production basis, the UK’s annual CO₂ emissions in 1900 were around 420 million tonnes; in 2020, China’s were 10.67 billion tonnes. Per capita, China’s production-based emissions have overtaken the EU-27. China’s consumption-based emissions have been rising towards Western footprint sizes, and today they are close to those of the EU-27.

India: ‘Green Hydrogen’ project could undermine climate and social justice goals

By Pritam Singh and Simon Pirani

Given the climate emergency our planet earth is facing, with accelerating global heating and devastating biodiversity loss, any initiative by a government which proclaims its aim as “greening the economy” deserves critical examination for both its importance and limitations.

Adivasi people starting a 300 km march to the state capital, in October 2021, to protest at proposed coal mines in the Hasdeo forests, Chhattisgarh, India. Photo from Adani Watch web site

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s announcement, on India’s 75th Independence Day, of the government’s plan to launch a National Hydrogen Mission is one such initiative by an emerging economic power in the global economy.

Its stated purpose was to make India a production and export hub for green hydrogen. This is also believed to be linked to India’s aim to reduce its reliance on oil from Russia and the Middle East which has come into the limelight during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

That hydrogen is a problematic green energy resource as an alternative to fossil fuels is not generally recognised. This obfuscation characterises Indian government’s “green” hydrogen mission too.

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Different types of hydrogen

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but for commercial use on earth it is produced either (i) from fossil gas, usually by steam reformation, or (ii) by the electrolysis of water. Electrolysis technology splits the hydrogen from oxygen in water.

More than 98% of hydrogen used commercially is “grey” – produced from gas. Left-over carbon is joined with oxygen and released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Global hydrogen production’s carbon footprint is about four-fifths the size of the aviation sector’s.

Climate adaptation: more sea walls will not be enough

The climate crisis is leading to massive social rifts. Politics-as-usual will tend to accentuate the problem rather than solve it – and effective adaptation calls for radical transformations that push beyond the existing system. By Ulrich Brand, Barbara Fried, Rhonda Koch, Hannah Schurian, and Markus Wissen

Imagine a summer heatwave in Berlin in 2050. For weeks on end, the temperature fails to dip below 20 degrees, even at night. The heat builds up in poorly renovated, heavily populated residential areas—while neighbourhoods with green areas and private gardens are up to ten degrees cooler.

This is a just a single glimpse of the kinds of inequality produced in a world shaped by climate change—and it is far from the most distressing one. By mid-century, far more serious environmental crises will interfere with living conditions in many regions of the world, or even render them unbearable.

A man walks along the giant sea wall being built along the coast of Jakarta, Indonesia, much of which is sinking below sea level. Photo by Irene Barlian / Climate Visuals Countdown : Creative Commons

Yet, even in Germany, heatwaves will claim lives. Preparing for the coming increases in extreme weather and environmental crises demands massive action—however, this need continues to be ignored. Even a rich country like Germany is failing to take the measures that are necessary to adapt.

The price is being paid primarily by those who have access to the fewest resources and bear the least responsibility for the climate crisis.

Climate adaptation is a social question, conceivably the social question of the coming age. But even on the left it is often pushed aside.

To speak of adaptation suggests a posture of defence and resignation, and fails to inspire assent. And anyway, wouldn’t we be better off directing all of our efforts toward mitigating climate change than already starting to reconcile ourselves to the consequences?

The opposite is true. If we take climate prognoses seriously and consider what, concretely, a two-degree rise in average global temperatures will mean, we will see all the more clearly that a radical fight against climate change is urgently necessary in order to prevent an even worse fate.