This month’s Smart Infrastructure blog reflects on the behavioural and culture change at the core of the Environment Agency’s Net Zero Carbon for Infrastructure Programme objectives

Owen Tarrant, Programme Manager, Net Zero Carbon for Infrastructure at the Environment Agency (EA), who recently achieved CHAMPION level of the Carbon Reduction Code for the Built Environment, argues that it is essential to see Net Zero as a people challenge first and foremost.

In his blog entitled Decarbonisation is a people challenge, Owen Tarrant discusses the EA’s strong commitment to Net Zero and the challenges of balancing the need to adapt to climate change through substantial investments and the need to mitigate the potential increase in carbon emission that these investments entail. He states that “(…) we are uncompromising about our role in mitigation, in protecting the future generations and the natural world from further disastrous temperature rise”. He stresses the need “to recognise the Net Zero challenge as a people challenge first and foremost, one that requires a change in attitude and thinking, and a fast change at that. The slightly daunting realisation was that we needed to achieve transformational behaviour change”.  He asserts “Professional change management is key to ensuring first and foremost that we have good two-way communication channels and that we adjust our approach in response to stakeholders’ feedback”. This will “ensure [that] people are at the heart of all new processes”. He describes the EA’s new Decarbonisation Technology Accelerator programme  as a pathway towards introducing improvements in management and building capacity and capability.

Read full blog here.