The title of this column series is Post Fossil Building. So let's get right to the point: How are we going to build when fossil energy is no longer available, or allowed to be used?
Imagine this: starting tomorrow, we will no longer have gas, oil or coal. Or peat or lignite. A CO2 lockdown. There won't be one tomorrow, although I expect it at some point. That is why we need to start thinking now about what we will produce in 2035, 2040 or 2050. And also: how do we do that without fossil fuels? How will we produce everything then? Will we still make the same things then as we do now?
Without fossil, we will have to be very fast, very inventive. For starters, of course, we have to invest with extremely little energy. And then also everything electric, from solar panels purchased in time. But only when the sun is shining, because you have invested in batteries too late and without fossil they are no longer made. In addition, of course, you just use labor again. Which, by the way, is also solar energy, indirectly through food. Wind energy? No, that has been sold to foreign investors of data centers.
I'm not going to rewrite your entire business plan here, I'm asking questions that every entrepreneur should ask themselves. Like: how do you invest extremely little energy in a product that is needed? For example, by using materials that require very little energy, to produce and process. Which ones, is then the question....
A second question to ask is: How do we use extremely little material for the products we make? If that product is still needed at all in a world without fossil. In fact, it may also be the case that you need to take a completely different tack and produce something completely different. And note that this is not about CO2 certificates. That's horse trading. No, we are preparing for net zero fossil.
Architects, too, will have to change. They will have to design differently, using as little energy and materials as possible. That's quite a job, by the way, because how do you tell an architect that individual expression, of individual feeling, no longer fits within the limits of the planet? Because that leads to high impact. I mean, Calatrava's buildings may be pleasing to the eye, but their environmental impact is three times that of a mainstream building.
Whatever we do, it must lead to impact reduction as soon as possible anyway, and preferably now, today. Otherwise, we won't meet the climate goals anyway and what we are doing makes no sense. If we want to avoid major disasters, we should not count creatively on benefits that we can only cash in 60 or 75 years from now, to 2100. Recycling? Why, who guarantees that? I estimate that not a single building will be demolished by 2100.
So nothing pushing the issues forward. We shouldn't wait until some government says we have to. The question is: what if there was no more fossil energy? How would you make your product today then? That conclusion is the dot on your new horizon. So get to work on your environmental impact. Like hell it has to come down.
About Ronald Rovers
Ronald Rovers is an ex-professor, physical fundamentalist, future thinker and now author, in a quest for the ultimate sustainable physical balance on earth, Without fossil of course. Productive Land he calls "our real capital, for food energy water and material. And that requires us to live 'vegetarian', and therefore to build vegetarian. In that light, I explore the future of construction here."
