The construction industry loves jargon. In the corridors of conferences and in glossy policy papers, you stumble over CO2 reductions, MPG scores, biobased materials and heat pumps. Every new construction project these days has a "sustainability paragraph" that shines with ambition. But very occasionally, someone comes to the table who not only questions the details of the plan, but redraws the entire room.
Ronald Rovers is such a person. In his recent plea in our podcast Bureau STOER, he says something that feels almost like heresy within the industry: CO2 is not the problem. It is a consequence of the problem. According to Rovers, the real crisis is not about emissions, but about our structural addiction to the holy trinity of material, energy and space use. That sounds radical, until you look with your eyelashes at everyday building practices.
The logic of 'more'
While we talk about circularity, the underlying engine keeps running at exactly the same speed. The dominant logic is unchanged:
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- More homes
- More infrastructure
- More mobility
- More power demand
- More economic growth
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Even sustainability has now become a tool to facilitate that growth. We don't build because the system becomes more efficient; we build because everything , from cities to profits, must expand. As soon as that expansion collides with physical limits, we simply try to stretch the boundary conditions with technology.
The result? A flight to the front. We demand more grid capacity, more energy production and even more complex installations. The question we invariably skip over in the process: does this solve the crisis, or do we mainly organize to continue on the same footing?
Symptom control as a strategy
That's where Rovers' story falters. He is not against sustainability, he is questioning the fundamentals. We treat CO2 as a technical error code that we can fix with a software update (a heat pump or a solar panel). In reality, those emissions are the symptom of a system that simply demands more than the earth can provide.
The signs that we have reached the "system ceiling" are everywhere:
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- The electrical grid is jammed.
- The drinking water supply is under pressure.
- Raw materials and energy are becoming geopolitical crowbars.
- Infrastructure costs are rising more explosively than the buildings they open up.
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Yet the reflex remains consistent. The question is never, "How do we build less materially intensive?" The question is always, "How do we maintain the current pace?"
An uncomfortable systemic question
The discomfort around thinkers like Rovers makes sense. Once you take the discussion fundamentally, you end up with questions that are much more politically and economically sensitive than an MPG standard. How much growth can really fit into the physical carrying capacity of our country? Can we combine unlimited growth with absolute material reduction? These are no longer technical challenges. These are systemic questions.
Of course, nuance is necessary. The housing shortage is not a theoretical concept but bitter reality. We cannot simply lock society down. But we must become more honest about our intentions.
Much of what we call "sustainability" today is in fact a survival strategy for the status quo. An attempt to keep our expansionism socially acceptable. So the most uncomfortable conclusion is: we are not preserving the world, we are mostly preserving our right to keep growing.
About Sightlines, by Jan Willem van de Groep
Sightlines is my way of taking the conversation about innovation in construction a step further. Not by shouting louder, but by looking more sharply. I write about what is going on under the surface: the assumptions, the systems and the choices that determine what we build and why. My ambition is to give direction to a sector that is always in transition, but unintentionally still thinks in old patterns too often. What systems are still holding back a construction that wants to be faster, more affordable and more future-proof?
Curious about previous installments of Sightlines? You can read them here.
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