I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Sean Smith on behalf of The Student. We started our conversation by discussing his recent keynote talk at the BSI Net Zero showcase, an event covering topics like AI, quantum, and smart cities. His message is urgent on climate change and CO2 emissions reductions, “there’s not a lot of time left”. However daunting this may sound, it is the truth. The current climate situation, he explains, is “15/20 years ahead of where we thought it was going to be” pushing governments to invest in adaptation and resilience, and the transition to net zero, despite limited funding.
Sean emphasises the role of younger generations in this 20–40-year plan. He believes these young minds are already more educated on sustainability and current climate events happening around us than current leaders were at their age. Despite this, he noted a growing disconnect between the general public and climate change related conferences, which tend to attract the already converted.
This disconnect is worsened through the interchangeable use of terms “net zero” and “carbon neutral”, (carbon neutral is a state in which carbon emissions are balanced with carbon removals, whereas net zero is where we are no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases). He advises us to use simple, consistent terminology to avoid “leaving the public behind”. Net zero, rather than carbon neutrality, is the focus now in government and industry.
An expert in future construction and infrastructure, Sean has been an advisor to a range of government departments, industry and housing associations in their moves to net zero policy making. He describes them as “trying to deliver it” but being hampered by a lack of comprehensive solutions and issues with funding. Both governments and industries are ultimately behind on where they need to be. He shares an example involving the Zero Emission Social Housing Taskforce (ZEST), a project over the COVID period that focused on retrofitting Scotland’s social housing, which makes up around 24% of the stock. The task force was hurried by the Scottish government into producing a detailed report within eight weeks. The government then took a year to respond. This frustrated Sean and many ZEST members as they wanted to support communities and households much earlier. It then took another 3 years for the government to consult in 2024 on an updated Heat in Buildings strategy which referred to the ZEST report in 2021.
While major steps have been taken, such as reducing power station emissions, we are now on to the costly and “tough stuff”. He estimates that retrofitting the UK’s entire housing stock could cost £400 billion, just shy of the total household savings in the UK at roughly £550 billion. Edinburgh University student research by Harry Richardson supervised by Sean has found that a government-led equity release scheme could mean the two largest sources of emissions, transport and buildings, can both be tackled on an individual level as most households can’t afford both.
“Many people cannot afford to use their life savings to buy an electric car and do up their house.”Sean stresses the importance of retrofitting, because we have “27 million UK homes and 3 million non-domestic buildings and they’re responsible for 99.4% of [building] emissions”, and by 2050 this stock will still be responsible for roughly 85% of emissions. A new centre for net zero high densitybuildings led by the University of Edinburgh, in partnership with 58 industry and public sector organisations and five other universities, will help address the lowest-income and key workers households who, as Sean stressed, need more support as current levels are insufficient.
“Smoke Stacks” by scalesoffmedia is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.