Climate Change Global Digest Winter 2022

This edition draws together some of the most useful documents and research launched or promoted at COP26.

CLIMATE FRAMEWORK

The Cross-Industry Action Group which comprises volunteers representing various builtenvironment professional institutes, member organisations and academic institutions has launched the Climate Framework. The role of the Climate Framework is ‘to cross-pollinate experiences and expertise across the industry, embracing all disciplines, and creating a shared curriculum framework as well as a platform for holistic climate knowledge’.
It’s a beautifully simple idea and the result is a regularly updated library of the most useful guidance on addressing climate change for all those in the built environment sector. The information is arranged by theme, level of detail and type of content, and once you’ve mastered the search engine, this will prove one of the most useful sources of guidance at your disposal. We strongly encourage you to take a look and sign up.

ARCHITECTS DECLARE'S PRACTICE GUIDE

Architects Declare has developed a Practice Guide to help signatories convert their declaration into meaningful action and build momentum within their practice. The first part is a Practice Roadmap that provides five steps to transform design businesses alongside some useful links to further advice.
The second part is a Project Design Guide, which emphasises regenerative design and what this means for individual schemes. It’s a very accessible document and achieves a good balance between clear headlines and detailed advice.

LETI GUIDES

LETI (The London Energy Transformation Initiative) has recently launched the Climate Emergency Retrofit guide and this joins a suite of documents including the Climate Emergency Design Guide and the Embodied Carbon Primer. Whilst produced within the London context, they form some of the best guidance for urban designers across the UK looking to achieve critical thresholds in climate positive design.

RTPI/TCPA THE CLIMATE CRISIS GUIDE

This introductory-level guide provides an overview of UK policy and legislation which can be used to address climate change at a local level and explains how this should be interpreted in local development plan and development management processes. It’s a useful resource to point clients and local authorities towards where changes are needed in policy to support more sustainable urban design strategies.

TCPA PRACTICAL GUIDE - BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENT LARGE-SCALE NEW COMMUNITIES

This guide explores the overarching requirements of a successful adaptation strategy. It provides recommendations on the headlines and for delivery on the ground. It is very much a guide for planners but has some useful detail in case studies on overheating and SUDS.

FIRST STEPS IN URBAN HEAT

A short, easy to digest guide that sets out and illustrates the practical interventions designers need to make to manage urban heat and the evidence behind the advice.

BEATING THE HEAT: A SUSTAINABLE COOLING HANDBOOK FOR CITIES

This handbook advocates a whole-system approach to optimally address urban cooling. It sets out how this is achieved and provides a wealth of case studies to exemplify the approach from Barcelona to Ljubljana. A number of tables are included in the guide which will prove particularly useful to designers as they outline key interventions and the trigger points for introducing them. Chapter 6 is entitled Heat-resilient Urban Design and Infrastructure and should be a focus for urban designers.

WORLD RESOURCES REPORT: TOWARDS A MORE EQUAL CITY

This four-page report promotes a new approach to cities, centred on providing equitable access to services. It offers seven crucial transformations under the themes of Reimagine urban service provision, Include the excluded and Create the enabling conditions for lasting change.

UKGBC: FINANCING THE BUILT ASSET ADAPTATION GAP

The UKGBC has issued a report of a discussion forum focused on how the adaptation of the built stock can be achieved. It advocates the IGNITION finance model and the report provides some useful costings for adapting existing neighbourhoods.

CITIGEN ENERGY CENTRE

The UK’s largest heating and cooling system is to be installed at E.ON’s Citigen energy centre in central London. It will use heat pump technology at a large scale to generate 4MW heating capacity (equivalent to heating 2,300 homes) and 2.8MW cooling capacity, with energy stored in boreholes 200m below ground.