No bricks, the walls and foundations made of compacted earth, cement made from clay and glass scavenged from demolition skips are just some of the construction changes needed to comply with Net Zero by 2050. The latest paper from Government-funded U.K. FIRES looks to “minimise new construction”, and notes the shape of the urban environment will change, allowing for “denser living and reduced transport needs”.
The latest U.K. FIRES paper seems to have slipped out quietly at the end of last year and has to date attracted little publicity. But the group, which comprises a number of academics led by Cambridge engineering professor Julian Allwood, made headlines around the world recently with previous work noting that all flying and shipping must stop by 2050, beef and lamb must be banned, and only 60% of energy will be available to cook food and heat homes. The group, which receives £5 million from Government sources, is interesting because it bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue honest, reality of absolute Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected or even invented will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles. It could be further argued that its continued existence and pronouncements are important, since they highlight the dishonesty and deceit that surrounds many other Net Zero promoters.
U.K. FIRES sees the future of construction based on stone, earth and timber, along with components “reused and repurposed” from demolition. Recycled steel, cement and bricks can be used, although this will be “constrained” – rationed might be a better word – by a supply of “non-emitting electricity under high demand”. Transformational construction changes will take longer to achieve, state the authors, but the U.K.’s ambitious target of a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030, “can only be achieved through reduced material demand”.
Building without bricks is an interesting suggestion and over two billion are currently produced each year. But bricks require high firing temperatures, and the enormous cost of Net Zero energy makes them uneconomic to produce. Cement also requires energy to make but it can be mixed with calcined clay. Nevertheless, calcined clay is also energy intensive and can only supplement 50% of Portland cement. “As a result, the mass low-cost consumption of concrete will no longer exist,” the authors note. Together, bricks and cement generate annual turnover of over £10 billion. Rammed earth, which can be used for foundation screeds and walls, is said to be a proven and potentially zero emission alternative, “which can utilise abundant local materials”.
Glass looks to be a complete no-no, with production requiring temperatures of 1,700°C and producing additional process emissions which cannot be avoided by electrification. Only recycled glass seems to be acceptable for the absolutist authors, so the need for complete circularity, “will somewhat constrain the supply of glass”. However, add the authors helpfully, this will “encourage direct re-use and reconditioning of glass panels from demolition sites”.
Steel is widely used in modern construction due to its large load-bearing properties. Around the world, recycled steel accounts for about a third of current production. To have zero emissions from producing steel relies on energy-intensive carbon capture and storage technology, which the authors observe, with their customary honesty, “is unlikely to be economical by 2050”. In the U.K., 85% of steel is already recycled, and it is explained that the Net Zero transition will heavily restrict its supply. Recycling of aluminium is said to be the “preferred zero emission compatible pathway”, and this will lead to “higher prices due to a restricted supply of the material”.
Timber is also constrained by carbon emission production processes, and sustainable supply is limited by forests unable to rapidly match increased demand. The construction industry accounts for a seventh of all plastics used in the U.K., but needless to say, there are problems. Although plastics play a vital part in insulating buildings – plastic doors and windows can be sealed much more effectively than wood – the authors note that they will become “increasingly constrained and expensive to produce”.
At times, your correspondent might be accused of exaggerating the effects of Net Zero, a collectivist political agenda increasingly divorced from the reality of modern living. But phrases such as “economic and societal breakdown”, and “mediaeval mud huts within 30 years”, would appear to be increasingly justified. Look at what is actually being said and done. In the Brecon Beacons, a new college called Black Mountains (BMC) is promoting its new climate breakdown university degree. One short course offered by this seat of learning is ‘Composting Toilets‘. This will serve as a “high quality exemplar” that will inform the design and building of some of the “potential future facilities on the BMC campus”.
As well as learning, this new college is obviously a seat of great easement as it moves effortlessly to a Net Zero future. The World Economic Forum says you will eat bugs and own nothing – to this might be added that you will crap into a hole in the ground, and, of course, be happy.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Perhaps we could distribute copies across the coast of northern France. The migrants might think twice before getting on their boats after reading this.
Here’s what brochure would look like!
“Welcome to the new Britain 2030”
Back in the Stoneage EU officials were running around warning we were running out of stones.
It would be sad enough if the climate actually were breaking down. But it’s not.
How the hell can climate “breakdown?”
Oh I’m sure Imperial College will come up with a model Huxley old boy..
It can in a world where every absurd juxtaposition can at least serve as a slogan for the dimwitted to repeat. As in recently (paraphrase)
Our criminal and genocidal government signs a death warrant for millions by licensing new fossil fuels.
As evident by the nonsense-plural, here is a person speaking which just stitches words together with complete disregard for their actual meanings and (likely), also with absolutely no idea what they actually mean or what a sentence constructed in this way could be supposed to express. Many important words are in it and this must surely be enough!
It’s a nonsensical marketing buzzword that the climate crazies use. That the MSM or politicians don’t push back at such nonsense is telling.
I learned very early on not to say there is “no climate change” or “no global warming” or “no climate breakdown” etc etc. because those are statements of certainty where there is NONE, and then the silly climate activists have the opportunity to ask you for your “evidence”. OfCourse you won’t be able to provide any because you cannot prove a negative. I make no claims about what the climate is doing or going to do. It is government with an agenda and their useful idiots in the leftist media plus their army of superglue road blockers that make claims about the climate. ————I simply ask them for their evidence, and ofcourse they have NONE. Or as Judith Curry pointed out “Sure, all things being equal, CO2 may cause a little bit of warming, but all things in the earths climate are NOT equal”. ——-A little bit of warming though is not a crisis, (or a breakdown) and infact there is nothing unusual about current climate or temperatures. Which means we cannot tell the difference between natural variability of the climate and changes to it that might be caused by humans, and indeed that is what the IPCC actually say. ——The see “no human signal in the climate data”. ————You could argue that if there is no human signal in the data that it is ok to say “There is no climate crisis” or “there is no climate breakdown”, but for tactical reasons I prefer not say that.
I went to the Speccie Energy Summit this week. Sadly, the energy policymakers are stuck in Net Zero groupthink. However, there were signs of scepticism from the audience (not just me!).
There’s still too many completely daft ideas being put to Government by those seeking to put their snouts into the subsidy trough. Full report on the link:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/reflections-spectator-energy-summit
Chris is not exagerrating he is just repeating what these morons are writing and saying.
Another conspiracy theory from us whackjobs, weirdos, morons and anti-scientists, all too true and real. 45% reduction in ‘carbon’ energy by 2030? Net zero of what? How does making a brick affect the fracking weather?
No materials or reduced and only recycled, rationed, WEF approved net-zero materials? WTF? Live and work in what? When the building needs maintenance, let it fall apart or use expensive ‘approved rationed recycled’ ? When you build new use only straw and mud? Or is that verboten? Is wood off limits?
Anti-human, anti-science.
What will the 10+ million invading Africans and Muslims live in me wonders?
They’ll live in your home. You get a tent. It’s your fault they’re here, because of colonialism or something, so make room and stop complaining. Complaining is racist.
I’m currently reading a book (“Aftermath, Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich” by Harald Jahner) about the reconstruction and reestablishment of Germany, immediately after the end of WW2.
The existing German and occupation authorities were faced with the need for the broken and bankrupt state to accommodate huge numbers of refugees/”Displaced People” from the East, many of whom where ethnically German but were culturally very different from the “natives”. The German authorities found a way to resolve the situation by forcing the “native” Germans to pay a significant additional tax on their land and property (i.e. a Wealth Tax) over a 30 year period in order to ease the plight of the refugees.
It solved the immediate problem, but many of the current political tensions in Germany can be traced back to the vast migration that took place during this period, that’s largely been air-brushed out of the people’s consciousness.
I wonder how long it’s going to be before our political masters propose a similar measure to ease the plight of the “Climate Refugees”?
People who were violently driven from their homes of centuries by slavic invaders supported by the (at that time) western colonial powers were as German as those you amusingly refer to here as natives. A hypothetical British analogy could perhaps be: Once upon a day, Viking invaders with German tanks again landed in Northhumbria (the country north of the Humber) and drove all of the English population, minus those women which had been raped to death, the men which had been tortured to death to make them hand over their property and the children which had been bludgeoned to death for the fun of it, into the home counties.
You analogy with the present-day invasion of people from Northern Africa who come here because of their own free will and a surplus of money which enabled them to do so is completely off the mark.
The situation was much more nuanced in post-war Germany than you suggest. Ethnic Germans comprised a large proportion of the DPs arriving in Germany at the end of the war, but there were others, many of whom saw Germany simply as a stop en-route to their ultimate destination of the US, Palestine etc.
However, in the face of an existing housing crisis, brought about by the destruction of housing during the war, the government of the day had to do something dramatic.
I agree that the migrants currently arriving in the UK are a completely different kettle of fish, but we have an entire political class that’s faced with a problem beyond their control, and they are likely to address this in the way that policians always seem to do, by spending other people’s money!
The situation was much more nuanced in post-war Germany than you suggest.
The situation was certainly very much different from anything a postmodern British historian of today who must write a lot of stuff about Jews! because Jews! Are! Important! would want to put to paper. You should perhaps take into account that my father (a boy of six at that time) was among these people driven out of their homes with the generous help of glorious Great Britainusa, to the eternal glory of Stalin, rightly famous for being the most mild-mannered and civil person ever to rule a country.
You’re, however, correct in pointing out that my hypothetical analogy was lacking: It should have been Driven into the home counties where large fleets of German and Japanese heavy bombers (something neither country ever really had) had made a years-long, concerted effort to reduce every city which could conceivably be found from the air to a pile of rubble by firebombing with the intent of exterminating the civil population (there was never a chance of achieving that, but not for want of good intentions).
Parallells to present-day Britain and its so-called migration crisis (for Germany, we’re talking about 15 – 20 million people arriving within less than a year) are there none.
My house?
Your house?
The invading Africans are presumably being shipped in not just for military duties but also for their mud hut building abilities.
Haha.. I had to have a giggle at that one Hux.. it tickled my.. 😉
Cheers.
Perhaps in Bannau Brycheiniog the academics are full of sxxxx. Whatever the rationale behind Net Zero is, it evidently presents an opportunity to make a profit, perhaps out of a government grant and so on. Anyway, the concept of “composting toilets” is not new; no shortage of trade advertising for them, and some of the water firms do extract energy from the sewage, such as Thames Water at the site that deals with my drainage.
Rammed earth construction is thousands of years old and is incredibly hard wearing and robust. China’s constructions of rammed earth still stand today! But, its time and labour intensive! (labour = slaves at the time) ,think Barratt homes would have to charge a hell of a lot more for building a housing estate full of em!
To make earth compacted enough to become a load bearing wall requires quite a bit of ram-power and as you say takes time. I wonder where all the energy behind the ram will come from….hmmmm difficult one…I wonder…
Yes it did, thousands of people pounding away night and day with hand tools similar to a ponch tub agitator but with a large heavy wooden head! I suppose with WEFs world plans, labour will be just as plentiful!
When I lived in Sweden I was invited with a group of friends to spend the weekends by a Swede whose family owned an island in Stockholm’s archipelago. The only toilets were of the composting variety, and many visitors preferred to wait until they got back to the mainland before using them
😀😀😀 Check your final sentence.
Maybe they were so desperate they went ballistic?
After waiting a weekend you can be sure of it.
Thanks, I did spot that at the time but couldn’t be arsed to change it.
😀😀😀
Nothing wrong with composting toilets. I had them in Portugal on my land and used them for years. The poop is covered with sawdust and doesn’t even smell. However, it is absolutely NOTHING to do with Net Zero. It’s just something you do when mains sewage is unavailable as it was up in the mountains where I lived. Don’t know why the author mentioned it actually unless he’s a bit squeamish.
I agree. I think well managed composting toilets are a great idea.
It would solve the problem of shite being pumped into our rivers and seas. And if left to rot down for long enough, would be good for soil fertility.
They sound fine until you extract drinking water nearby. This is a severe problem in Africa. Nothing wrong with composting but it needs to be well managed as the runoff is lethal. This is why the environment agencey hates farmers, and farm animals too, but wild ones need to be “conserved”.
So the future is based on houses built of straw.
yes.. and on sand.. 😉
They will spend many happy hours trying to ram that for foundations.
Sounds like the Flintstones for us Farm Yard Animals
But I suspect there will be another set of rules for the Pig Elite
Let’s start by recycling all the materials from the Royal Palaces or better still accommodation for immigrants. That should ease big ears conscience or is he known as fat fingers now.
Behind all the NET ZERO bull-excrement lays the truth. Wear it on your shirt.. get the truth out there.. 😉
The Punk movement of the late 70s was prophetic:
No Bricks, No Glass, No Cement, No Future.
OK…let’s get this straight..I don’t give a fig what the UK Government and it’s ‘think tanks’ think….I don’t care what the EU says….I don’t care what the kleptocrats from the WHO WEF or any other stupid unelected ‘acronym’ group says….
I’m not doing any of it. I’m not getting rid of my gas cooker, I’m not getting rid of my log burner..I’m not eating fricken bugs, I’m not using any apps/certificates/ or digital I.D’s, I will NEVER take any of your ‘safe and effective’ shyte……I’m not living in a mud hut, I will never willingly buy an electric car….or give up cash….I will fight for my family’s future……I will find reserves I didn’t know I had…..
So try forcing us, because it ain’t happening easily or without a fight…
I am one of millions who will not bend the knee so just Fu** O*f…..
Yep, with you there tyke.
And I will gladly stand with you ebg.👍
Absolutely.
I do wonder how they think they’re going to get ordinary folk to go along with this bollocks.
Just for general interest, we are getting very active here re Climate madness. We decided last night to hold our own Town Meeting, as the local Town Council is just a mouthpiece for the County Council, and invite residents to come and see for themselves what these Net Zero policies will look like in practical terms and how their lives will be impacted. We are also planning to host a public debate between those of us who don’t think there is a climate emergency with those that do. All of this will be done in a friendly softly softly way so people don’t start pointing fingers at us and calling us [PUT LABEL HERE]. We will mention things like 5G – the towers are going up everywhere – and traffic restrictions (council is trying to pedestrianise the High Street) and well, just trey and educate people. We are also planning on doing our own research. If we gather a good body of evidence, we may even take the legal route to challenge the idea there is a climate emergency. Small steps…
LOL..I just posted at the same time Aethelred…yours sounds like the sane option!! LOL!!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-were-being-told-what-to-buy/
And here’s Paul Homewood over at TCW with his excellent weekly take on the Net Zero madness.
Yes, our government definitely wants us dead.
Oh they want us dead alright.. like yesterday if possible..
The people driving this can only be stopped in one spectacularly brutal way – their day of reckoning is fast approaching
The real scandal here is that the government spends money on commissioning such reports. The chances that any of this will actually be implemented in the UK before a crowd of hungry and cold people storms the ridiculous barricades at Downing Street, tramples the policemen stationed there to death and then proceeds to do something very unpleasant with the present occupier are zero. And the chance that this will be done in other parts of the world, where people have more pressing problems than worrying about how the weather might become a century from now, are below zero.
I hope your assessment comes good RW.
As you say, people burning dung for cooking and heating trying to eke out an existence on a dollar a day with no electricity have better things to think about. It is the wealthy west that is to curb it’s energy use (fossil fuels) because at UN level it has been decided we have used up more than our fair share of those in becoming prosperous. But it is a weird kind of eco socialism that coerces poor people into not using the very fuels that could bring them out of abject misery and which would double their life expectancy. The hypocrisy was laughably illustrated when the EU wanted to put thousands of solar panels all over the Saharah so they could cable the energy back to Europe, while leaving the poor Sub Saharan people without electricity.
Try building a long span bridge out of rammed earth, without steel.
The UK FIRES report is total cobblers, it’s not going to happen as any politician who tries to implement it would be lynched.
I can imagine Julian Allwood is a real bore at dinner parties.
In my local paper there is a whole “Green” page spouting the most ridiculous fact free drivel about the climate, and encouraging all the readers eg “Don’t buy new things, simply borrow them from a neighbour”. They say it is silly for us all to have a lawnmower each and only one should be required for the whole street. We should not buy frocks and skirts and instead rent them from a clothes library. We all have DIY tools like drills that only get used for 16 minutes a year and we should really be renting a drill bit only when we need it. Can you imagine that some bureaucrat working in the depths of some silly UN Carbon Assessment Department worked this 16 minute thing out .But imagine it is a Sunday morning and you need to go fix that broken fence or cupboard, but you need to wait till Monday morning at 9 am to rent a Phillips drill bit for 20 volt drill that you should not really be owning anyway, as you should really be walking 20 doors down the street to see if a neighbour you hardly know is finished with the community drill. You then arrive at the drill library on Monday morning to find it is a bank holiday and the cupboard door will just have to remain hanging of it’s hinges till tomorrow. ————-Everything about the green agenda is anti human and utterly pathetic.
Furthermore, if everybody is renting and nobody buying that’s one hell of a lot of people without jobs.