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Sustainability: A good news story

By pwpro posted 12-03-2014 13:34

  

A critical goal of sustainable public works will be to ‘decouple’ our environmental footprint from economic growth and wellbeing. The good news, says Peter Newman, is that we’re now starting to see signs of this happening. 

 
 

by Peter Newman AOProfessor of Sustainability, Curtin University, Perth WA

Public works engineers do the work that keeps our cities going, but are often not seen or appreciated for their critical contributions. In an age of global urban development of unprecedented numbers, we must have the energy, water and waste systems that enable urban civilisation to create wealth, wellbeing and liveability. 

The challenge of sustainability is that we must now create this wealth, wellbeing and liveability while reducing our environmental footprint. 

In the past, we have become very clever at creating this urban civilisation, but at the expense of our global and local footprint. In particular, we must decouple GDP (gross domestic product) from GHG (greenhouse gases), or fossil fuels. 

Public works engineers know they are in the firing line to be able to show how to do this. So, where are we on the path to achieving this lofty goal? Are we starting to show the decoupling, or is it still getting away from us? 

Plenty of people think the latter, but I want to show that we should not be discouraged, as the first signs of a turnaround are here. GDP and GHG are decoupling. 

The PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency with the European Union has collected a lot of data to see whether the signs of a turnaround can be seen. They showed that between 2000 and 2012 the growth in global GHG emissions was 35 per cent – which seems a lot, but global GDP growth was 43 per cent. And in the past year, GHG in total rose just 1.5 per cent, which on a per-capita basis is a decline, while global GDP growth was 2.6 per cent. So, if the first signs are there, where are the changes happening that are leading to this plateauing and slight decline?

The evidence can be seen in three areas:

1. A peak in global investment in fossil fuels in comparison to renewables;

2. A peak in the consumption of fossil fuel for power;

3. A peak in the use of cars and oil. 

Power investment

The world had been investing mostly in fossil fuels for power until early this century, but by 2008, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, renewables represented 50 per cent of investment. That figure is now around 70 per cent. 

China and India are dominating this market, with China installing 12 gigawatts of solar panels in 2013. The World Bank, the US government and the EU have all announced that they will no longer invest in coal-fired power plants. 

Power consumption

Many developed countries, including Australia, are now showing declines in power demand as the rapid growth in energy-efficient appliances and buildings start to dominate the market. 

In addition, solar cells are removing a substantial part of the household demand for power. In Perth, 140,000 households have purchased 350MW of power. Utilities are now left with excess power due to an inability to predict this downturn. 

Peak oil and peak car

Perhaps the biggest over-prediction by forecasters has been in the growth of private vehicle use. After 100 years of growth per capita, car use peaked in 2004 in the US, Europe and Australia – especially in our cities. Those places with slow population growth like Sydney have now reversed their total VKT (vehicle kilometres travelled). 

This shift seems to be due to: 

• Oil prices which remain high and are likely to stay high as conventional oil production seems to have peaked and all other oil is expensive; 

• Public transport growth, which has been dramatically increasing wherever investment has enabled relative speeds to traffic to increase (mostly rail);

• Mobile phones and tablets, which are easier to use while being chauffeured in transit than while driving.

My colleague in sustainability at Curtin University, Jeff Kenworthy, has produced a new study that shows in the past decade that car use and GDP have decoupled in almost all cities. 

The world is changing quite rapidly and the engineers who provide infrastructure for cities should be encouraged to believe they are making a difference. There is a great deal more to do, but we can now see the corner has been turned. 

 

Professor Peter Newman will be presenting at the 2014 IPWEA Sustainability in Public Works Conference in Tweed Heads from 27–29 July 2014. Visit ipwea.org/sustain2014

This article originally appeared in the March-April 2014 issue of Public Works Professional. 

 



Conference Registrations now open

27-29 July 2014




 









Peter Newman AO
Prof Peter Newman AO

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