FRM Response to the Institution of Civil Engineers ‘New Normal for Infrastructure’ Consultation

What will change as we slowly exit the pandemic in terms of behaviour and infrastructure requirements, fall into a spectrum of views from the ‘revert to normal’, to the ‘fundamental shift in views, systems and behaviours’. Either end of the spectrum requires consideration of the underlying shifts that were occurring anyway, and the Green Paper prepared by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) lists the UK Industrial Strategy four socio-economic grand challenges as:-

• artificial intelligence and data

• ageing society

• clean growth

• future of mobility

To this must be now added “social distancing” and “carbon emission reduction”. Both impact on social and economic life moving forward. The immediate new normal for public life will be infrastructure design which provides space and prevents crowding.

Covid 19 has given people a heightened awareness of various vulnerabilities in national and local infrastructure – but also of the value of our local communities, social gatherings and the natural world around them.

A key environmental outcome of the Covid-19 virus is that carbon emissions can be rapidly reduced by new ways of working, smarter use of buildings for work and dramatic cuts in transport, meetings, conferences etc. Progress towards 2050 carbon targets hitherto felt like a person running through treacle, but the enforced change has demonstrated that leaps are possible in areas where increments were proving slow to deliver.

Priorities on infrastructure must be re-evaluated, many areas are covered in the consultation (including housing, commercial buildings etc.) and two topics from our response are here:

Transport

The cost of transport is almost in direct contravention of the polluter pays principle, usually as the result of subsidy. You can fly to many other countries for less than the cost of rail travel between the Midlands and London. The cost of environmentally damaging activities should reflect their impacts. There is precedent for this with the landfill tax and other national and international producer responsibility measures.

Acknowledging that the economic viability of HS2 has been under close scrutiny, we consider that Covid-19 will have long lasting impacts on public attitudes to rail travel and how rail infrastructure is developed that may significantly alter underlying assumptions. The cost benefit analyses for HS2 should be re-evaluated. Could this public money be better spent on the existing infrastructure and transportation rather than the new line which shaves a bit of travel time off, albeit increasing total capacity – but if we are travelling less, how will that affect future capacity needs?. This is a question that should be re-examined.

Covid 19 has had a huge impact on the airline industry, and these effects may well be long lasting given the evident changes in work patterns, reduction in travel for meetings/events, increased border controls, elevated health risks of travel in confined spaces and effects of recession. Sustaining the reduction in aircraft carbon emissions is clearly a strong consideration in developing any new measures for reenergising the airline industry. In view of the impact on passenger travel for the foreseeable future, and in the light of the carbon challenge, the government must also make a firm decision to end plans for Heathrow expansion. The government should consider direct intervention by taking a majority stake in airlines to protect workers jobs and guide the industry to a lower carbon trajectory.

It is essential that there is a focus on clean transport: cycle ways, pedestrian routes and electric vehicle infrastructure for heavy vehicles (as being developed in the waste and resources sector) in addition to light goods / domestic vehicles.

Resources & Waste

An important lesson from the pandemic lockdown has been that the UK has limited resources, and there are challenges in exporting recyclable materials overseas. We need to find resources and manage waste materials in the UK. UK governments were moving towards this before Covid with National Resource and Waste Strategy including Enhanced Producer Responsibility (EPR) and the plastic Packaging tax for those products with <20% recycled content. We have an opportunity to create more circular thinking as part of industrial/ clean growth strategies. This also necessitates change in product / packaging design, mandatory recyclability labelling, simplified range of materials, incentivisation of re-use / repair models and stimulation of UK markets by investment in reprocessing infrastructure and by introduction of tax or other fiscal incentives, where appropriate.

The shift to increased home delivery of goods is another leap in consumer behaviour, this represents an increase in transit packaging (cardboard in particular, but also plastics / paper). Whilst these habits may alter as the shops re-open, they are unlikely to return to the previous trajectory, some behaviours are already entrenched. This offers opportunities in circular models for returnable packaging and simplification of packaging materials. The UK needs to continue developing recycling and materials reprocessing infrastructure so that it can boost the circular economy and become less reliant on exporting materials overseas.

Leadership & Planning

The Civil Engineering profession needs to plan what realistic UK infrastructure carbon reduction targets can be set over the next year, and then support the UK government in debating these at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (CoP) 26 in Glasgow in 2021. A UK White Paper on Covid-19 and Carbon Reduction infrastructure for agreement before CoP 26 would support this.

Infrastructure takes a long time to plan, fund, design and construct. All infrastructure changes to help meet the 2050 target must be planned over the next 20 years, before 2040.