27 January 2015

Costain underlined its commitment to cutting carbon with a strong attendance at a conference to mark the first anniversary of the Infrastructure Carbon Review (ICR).

A joint industry and Government initiative, the ICR sets out a series of actions to reduce carbon in the construction and operation of the UK’s infrastructure assets. It aims to cut 24 million tonnes of carbon emissions from UK infrastructure projects by 2050.

Darren James, Costain Managing Director for Infrastructure, led a team of senior managers at the event at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ conference centre in London. They joined clients, contractors, consultants and industry associations who have also signed up to the ICR pledging to reduce carbon in their business and supply chains.

Speakers at the conference included Mike Putnam, Skanska UK chief executive and Green Construction Board co-Chair; Chris Newsome, Anglian Water Asset Management Director; and Terry Morgan, Crossrail Chairman.

“The conference was an excellent opportunity for us to gain insight into best practice across the industry with regards to the quantification and management of embodied and operational carbon,” said Damien Canning, Costain Carbon Manager.

“Costain has signed up to six key commitments relating to the quantification and management of both embodied carbon – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the manufacture, transport and construction of building materials - and operational carbon – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a building as it is used.

“Historically the boundary of our carbon footprint has been rather narrow, consisting of emissions arising from carrying out our operations. By broadening the scope to include upstream and downstream emissions I am confident a range of commercial opportunities will present themselves as we seek to minimise our whole life carbon impacts.”

A number of Costain projects are already delivering significant carbon savings but, said Damien, the Company continues to look for new ways to cut carbon.

“We want to construct tools to highlight carbon ‘hot spots’, which will improve our ability to identify areas for collaboration with our supply chain to drive low carbon solutions. We’re currently in the process of developing and integrating a carbon baseline tool, which projects and tracks our performance with regards to embodied carbon, with our innovation portal. So, for example, someone logging in to the innovation portal looking for information on materials, could be prompted to investigate lower carbon concretes he or she might not be aware of.

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