Climate Change Mitigation in Construction

About this course.

Climate change mitigation means reducing greenhouse gas emissions — cutting the amount of carbon dioxide and other warming gases that human activities release, and where possible removing gases from the atmosphere. In construction, mitigation is about building and operating in ways that put fewer emissions into the air: using less energy, using cleaner energy, and using lower-carbon materials and methods. It is different from adaptation, which is about coping with the impacts of a changing climate — designing and building assets that can withstand floods, bushfires, storms and heat. Put simply, mitigation tackles the cause of climate change (emissions), while adaptation manages the consequences. Both matter, and both belong in good construction practice, but this course is about mitigation.

The distinction is worth getting right because the two are sometimes confused, and because a good project addresses both. A building can be highly resilient to extreme weather (well adapted) yet still be a heavy emitter (poorly mitigated), and vice versa. Mitigation asks: how do we reduce the emissions caused by making and running this building? Adaptation asks: how do we make sure this building copes with the climate it will face? Many measures happen to serve both — an efficient, well-insulated, all-electric building both emits less and stays comfortable through heatwaves — but the two questions are distinct, and mitigation is the one this course develops.