Delivering London's decarb

Innovation & impact

David Rowsell

_{Managing Director}
_{Kier Construction,}
_{London & Thames Valley}

Also on this panel:

Chloe Cooper

_{Regional Commercial Director. Kier Construction, London & Thames Valley}

Karen Carter

_{Public Sector Director, Pagabo}

Louise Sunderland

_{European Lead for Cities & Places,}
_Mace

Aneesh Maini

_{Head of Development,}
_{Enfield Council}

Quick read

London’s 2030 net zero target is clear. Delivery still lags, especially in the public sector.
Public sector funding and governance still reward short-term wins, not long-term decarbonisation.
Carbon should be managed like cost, tracked early, measured properly and protected through delivery.
Well-structured frameworks can speed up delivery, create better value for the public purse and drive more consistent outcomes. Crucially, when designed in the right way, they also encourage the behavioural change needed across the industry.
Portfolio and place-based approaches can improve viability, scale learning and bring costs down.
Audience discussion reinforced the need to link decarbonisation to energy spend, service affordability and business models that work without waiting for central government.

^{Aneesh Maini and Louise Sunderland}

This session brought together public sector, consultancy and contractor perspectives on the same challenge: London’s decarbonisation targets are clear, but delivery still breaks down when schemes hit real-world constraints. The conversation opened with the scale of the task, London’s ambition to reach net zero in the built environment by 2030, well ahead of national timelines and the reminder that buildings and transport account for the vast majority of emissions, making the built environment a decisive battleground.

A recurring theme was that ambition is not the problem. The issue is aligning decision-making, funding and procurement with what decarbonisation demands. Karen Carter described what she sees across public sector customers: strategies exist, but many organisations lack confidence that they can deliver them. The reasons are structural, short business case windows, rigid approval pathways, and procurement timescales that do not match the long-term nature of whole-life carbon and operational performance. The result is a drift towards “easier wins” rather than systematic change, even where teams want to do more.

That misalignment showed up strongly in the local authority perspective. Aneesh Maini spoke about the tension between ambition, affordability and deliverability: funding often arrives late or with constraints that make long-term programming difficult, while internal governance demands certainty and quick returns. He also highlighted the importance and challenge of bringing asset management thinking into the earliest stages. Operational carbon and whole-life value cannot be managed as an afterthought, but embedding that mindset can create “healthy tension” between delivery teams and those responsible for the estate, especially when cost and performance trade-offs become visible.

We’re taking a programme and portfolio approach, setting out our ambition over ten years, not just looking at schemes one by one.

Aneesh Maini, Enfield Council

From a city and programme management viewpoint, Louise Sunderland argued that the difference between strategies that sit on a shelf and those that deliver is whether decarbonisation is designed in from the outset. When sustainability is treated as a bolt-on, costs rise later and options narrow. She described work where early audits, data and “no regrets” decisions helped customers move faster, and made the point that many organisations still silo sustainability into one role or team rather than integrating it into business cases and cabinet-level decisions. The panel returned several times to the same conclusion: delivery improves when decarbonisation becomes part of core decision-making, not an optional agenda item.

This “non‑negotiable” framing came through clearly. Louise was direct that decarbonisation is no longer a “nice to have”; it has to sit at the front of every programme, portfolio and asset conversation, regardless of whether people consider the targets too ambitious. The rationale was not branding or compliance, but resilience, health outcomes and long-term affordability.

Several speakers then moved from principle to the mechanics of keeping carbon in scope once projects move into delivery. Chloe Cooper described a familiar pattern: carbon commitments made early get eroded when programmes slip, costs rise or constrained London sites drive tough decisions, especially if carbon is not set as a clear obligation at the start. Chloe and Louise both emphasised the role of data: understanding the carbon impact of materials and design choices, feeding that into models early, and using it throughout change control. Chloe captured it with a practical analogy: treat carbon “like another currency” or budget, managed in the same disciplined way as cost, so that every decision is made with full visibility of the trade-off.

Procurement sat at the centre of the debate because it shapes what becomes “normal” on a scheme. Karen Carter argued that procurement should be seen as a behavioural tool, not a clunking process that arrives late and forces teams back to the start. The panel challenged the idea that compliance prevents early market engagement: public sector customers can engage supply chains, draw on supplier knowledge, and design procurement around outcomes, including decarbonisation, without compromising fairness. The key, she suggested, is to define non-negotiables up front so carbon is not the first thing cut when inflation or funding gaps appear.

Procurement doesn’t just select suppliers. It shapes behaviour, sets expectations and gives projects greater certainty over outcomes.

Karen Carter, Pagabo

The panel also explored what can be learned between sectors. Chloe noted that private sector customers often set carbon expectations early and evaluate contractors on that basis, creating clearer incentives to innovate. In contrast, public sector governance can push teams towards lowest cost decisions that store up operational cost and carbon impacts for later. A concrete example was discussed how unexpected shocks (Covid, Brexit and cost inflation) forced difficult re-scoping decisions on schemes that had originally aimed higher, including an ambition to deliver a passive house approach that later had to be reduced to regain cost neutrality. The lesson was not to lower ambition, but to secure early alignment with funders and governance so that decarbonisation commitments are protected rather than treated as optional extras.

Audience contributions reinforced that decarbonisation succeeds when it is linked to economics people already manage. One speaker urged the room not to wait for central government, and to connect decarbonisation to energy spend and service affordability so finance leaders engage early. Another described a “data bottleneck” in making viable cases for investors and tenants, and the panel response returned to scale: portfolio approaches help build viable business models, improve data quality, and reduce cost through repeatability.

If you can think about portfolios and not just about an individual programme or an individual asset, that can also help… if we do it on scale as well, that drives cost down too.

Louise Sunderland, Mace

The discussion closed with a practical call to action: make carbon outcomes non‑negotiable from the beginning, use data to keep decision-making honest, and reshape procurement and funding to reward long-term performance rather than short-term lowest price. The session left a clear message for the industry in London: progress depends less on new slogans and more on the discipline to set expectations early, track them properly, and deliver at scale.

What will make the biggest difference to decarbonising London’s built environment?

Make carbon targets non-negotiable
Reward outcomes, not lowest cost
Fund delivery at programme scale
Use better data earlier
Earlier engagement with contractors

Key take-aways

Design carbon in early and manage it like cost: set a carbon “budget”, track it through change control, and use data to make trade-offs explicit.
Shift from project-by-project activity to programme and portfolio delivery to improve viability, drive learning and lower cost through repeatability.
Use procurement to shape behaviours: engage supply chains early, make decarbonisation non‑negotiable in requirements, and evaluate bids on outcomes, not just lowest price.
Cross-sector learning matters: the public sector can learn from how the private sector sets, tracks and protects carbon commitments early.