It is common for climate research to focus on climate mitigation and emissions reduction however climate risk and adaptation are key to managing unavoidable climate impacts. The State Government is developing sector adaptation strategies and plans, of which the built form is a key sector, with land use planning and transport included, along with broader infrastructure such as utilities.
The ‘Avoid, Shift and Improve’ framework is often used to articulate the most effective way to decarbonise transport systems, including freight. Avoid measures include integrated land use planning, working from home or local hubs, and walkable communities and amenities. Shift measures include investment, evaluation and measurement of active and public transport and behaviour change programs. Improve measures include the technology transition to zero emissions vehicles and fuels.
While infrastructure accounts for 79% of emissions across Australia, embodied emissions account for 3% of total emissions and this share will increase as grids decarbonise and vehicles transition to zero emissions. Reducing embodied emissions across the asset life cycle is therefore critical to meeting overall climate targets.
Similar to transport system decarbonisation, PAS2080 (a global standard for managing infrastructure carbon that meets World Trade Organization requirements) provides a carbon management standard for addressing infrastructure decarbonisation with an ‘avoid, switch, and improve’ framework. Avoid measures include actions to minimise requirement for new infrastructure through tools such as travel demand management and modelling, refurbishing or reusing existing assets or reducing the footprint of new infrastructure. Switch measures include optimising design of planned infrastructure to reduce material requirements. Improve measures include applying circular economy principles utilising recycled and reuse materials, and zero emissions technologies.
Over 75% of natural resources are consumed in cities, which produce over 70% of global waste. With approximately half of emissions associated with material use, there is a need to transform linear value chains and preserve material value to achieve Net Zero at the city scale.
There have been calls globally from organisations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to move away from wasteful linear models of resource consumption to more sustainable circular resource models. The Australian Government established the Circular Economy Taskforce to address this issue and CSIRO have published circular economy mapping at national level to provide transparent understanding of material flows across the economy. At State level the government also has avoid, reuse and recycling targets for residential, commercial and C&D waste.
Given historical land development trends and preferences in Greater Perth and regional towns for large land parcels, low rise developments and urban sprawl, achieving optimal integrated land use planning and sustainable communities can be challenging. Providing tools and practical solutions to address this challenge is therefore needed and changing consumer behaviour and preferences will be critical to having political support to do this. With materials, labour and housing costs rising with interest rates in recent years, a priority has been for faster, low-cost build and infill developments. Building the case for co-benefits with sustainable design and demonstrating evidence for this is therefore critical over the coming years.
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