Kevin McCloud: the best net-zero carbon city - Grand Designs magazine

Kevin McCloud: the net-zero carbon city

Can you guess the location of this special place?

By Kevin McCloud |

Kevin McCloud reveals a net-zero carbon place that has already achieved an impressive 100 per cent recycling record.

It’s getting to the point where anything we do to try and mitigate carbon emissions is pointless. We are almost at the tipping point of no return, as Jonathon Porritt explains in his book Hope in Hell. Wholesale runaway planetary warming is inevitable and it is going to become uncomfortable quite a while before 2050. That is a deliberately negative, but quite possible, scenario.

I happen to be a cautious optimist and therefore in the Bill Gates camp of those who believe technology and collective action will get us out of this mess, but who cites two important numbers: 50 and 0:50, as in 50 billion tonnes of carbon emissions that our species spews out every year and net-zero carbon emissions, our 2050 target.

Kevin McCloud net zero carbon city revealed: it's a mature forest of deciduous trees

This place has a strictly enforced 100 per cent recycling policy. Image: Lukasz Szmigiel

Net-zero carbon city

So my heart skipped a beat when I recently read of an exemplar city that has already achieved net-zero carbon and has a 100 per cent recycling record. It’s a place with a circular economy and a super-sustainable history that my friend Paul King recently visited. Paul is MD of sustainability at Lendlease, a development company that has set its own ambitious net-zero carbon targets. So, I expect him to seek out urban paradigms of eco-goodness and tell us all about them. You have to guess which country this city is in.

Ancient community

I’ll allow you to read the full citation written by Paul: ‘This is a big, thriving place composed of high-rise towers, single-storey dwellings and everything in between. It is a home and workplace to millions. Yet it has been independently verified as net-zero carbon, water and waste through rigorous lifecycle assessment. All carbon emissions are systematically captured and stored. They become local fuel production and the manufacture of new building materials.

‘Water use is carefully managed. But not at the expense of extensive green space at all levels. And this place also has a strictly enforced 100 per cent recycling policy, so absolutely nothing goes to waste. Everything undergoes reprocessing and reuse in the best example yet of a truly circular economy. Clever aesthetic design is one of the keys to success. More than 50 per cent of this city’s infrastructure is in plant spaces underground.’

Kevin McCloud reveals a net-zero carbon place that has already achieved an impressive 100 per cent recycling record.

It’s getting to the point where anything we do to try and mitigate carbon emissions is pointless. We are almost at the tipping point of no return, as Jonathon Porritt explains in his book Hope in Hell. Wholesale runaway planetary warming is inevitable and it is going to become uncomfortable quite a while before 2050. That is a deliberately negative, but quite possible, scenario.

I happen to be a cautious optimist and therefore in the Bill Gates camp of those who believe technology and collective action will get us out of this mess, but who cites two important numbers: 50 and 0:50, as in 50 billion tonnes of carbon emissions that our species spews out every year and net-zero carbon emissions, our 2050 target.

Kevin McCloud net zero carbon city revealed: it's a mature forest of deciduous trees

This place has a strictly enforced 100 per cent recycling policy. Image: Lukasz Szmigiel

Net-zero carbon city

So my heart skipped a beat when I recently read of an exemplar city that has already achieved net-zero carbon and has a 100 per cent recycling record. It’s a place with a circular economy and a super-sustainable history that my friend Paul King recently visited. Paul is MD of sustainability at Lendlease, a development company that has set its own ambitious net-zero carbon targets. So, I expect him to seek out urban paradigms of eco-goodness and tell us all about them. You have to guess which country this city is in.

Ancient community

I’ll allow you to read the full citation written by Paul: ‘This is a big, thriving place composed of high-rise towers, single-storey dwellings and everything in between. It is a home and workplace to millions. Yet it has been independently verified as net-zero carbon, water and waste through rigorous lifecycle assessment. All carbon emissions are systematically captured and stored. They become local fuel production and the manufacture of new building materials.

‘Water use is carefully managed. But not at the expense of extensive green space at all levels. And this place also has a strictly enforced 100 per cent recycling policy, so absolutely nothing goes to waste. Everything undergoes reprocessing and reuse in the best example yet of a truly circular economy. Clever aesthetic design is one of the keys to success. More than 50 per cent of this city’s infrastructure is in plant spaces underground.’

Image: 50 per cent of this city’s infrastructure is housed and managed in spaces underground. Image: Irina Iriser

No poverty, homelessness or despair

Above ground it is visually stunning, juxtaposing old with new architecture, creating a consistently stimulating environment that surprises at every turn. So, this place is not just an environmental exemplar, it is a social and economic one too. The housing caters for all, in tenure-blind, dense and beautiful places. Open spaces encourage interaction and connection. Clever designs demand that even as the local population grows and traffic increases – albeit using renewable energy – the place manages to feel both bustling and peaceful at the same time. Food is also grown, produced and distributed locally. It is accessible to all and affordable too. And there is no sign of poverty, homelessness or despair.

I had difficulty figuring out where on the planet this city is. Until I began to realise that it is not in one country. Nope, it is a place which, remarkably, exists in nearly every country on the globe.

View into an evergreen forest, which is a net zero carbon place

There is no sign of poverty, homelessness or despair. Image: Steven Kamenar

The forest ecosystem

It is a forest. Forests are not just woodland, places to grow timber, but giant ecosystems of interdependent plants, trees, insects and fungi that show us how to produce, manage, recycle and cherish resources. If you’ve read another great book of 2020, The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, you will know that the forest is not red in tooth and claw, but a respectful and balanced system.

You will know that trees are sentient, can smell and feel when they are being harmed, that they carefully rear their young, will continue to feed the root systems of decaying pensioner tree stumps around them, and will act collectively to sacrifice foodstuffs and channel them to an outlier relative sitting on stony ground at the edge of the forest. They are philanthropic – I mean philodendric. They love other trees. Who knew? Only Mr Wohlleben apparently.

A model for the future

If you read Jonathon Porritt’s magnificent and at times terrifying book, then read Peter Wohlleben’s too, as an antidote. And go to a forest to take the pulse of an oak and benefit from a dose of phytoncides, the calming chemicals produced by trees. As Paul writes, ‘You can experience for yourself the best net-zero places on the planet, and ask yourself if only we could achieve a fraction of these things in the places we design, build and inhabit, we might yet stand a chance of leaving our grandchildren the future homes, cities and forests they deserve.’

With thanks to Paul King

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