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ONLY TWO years ago, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, said that climate change was the single greatest threat facing the planet. More recently, the Stern Report on the economics of climate change – issued in October 2006 – concluded that the longer the world puts off action to deal with the changing climate, the more expensive it will get.
By the end of this century, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we will see a probable temperature rise of between 1.8°C and 4°C, sea level rises of up to 43cm, a major increase in the number and intensity of heat waves, and heavier tropical storms.
Fire and rescue services, as much as any other major public or private organisation, must take action to respond to the changing climate.
On the operational side, it is likely that brigades will have to develop new tactics, procedures, equipment and training to cope with the changing weather conditions predicted by most experts – including hotter, drier summers and more frequent major flooding.
Brigades can also support the global effort to tackle climate change by contributing to the wider sustainability agenda. London Fire Brigade (LFB), for example, is taking a range of steps in this area. For example, with the London Mayor’s Climate Change Action Plan setting a target to reduce carbon emissions in the capital by 20% from 1990 levels by the year 2010, LFB is aiming to reduce energy consumption by at least 2% year-on-year in a number of ways.
Sustainability issues
One of the simplest ways to reduce energy consumption is by good housekeeping. Just switching off lights and equipment when they are not needed can save up to 30% of energy use – and it costs nothing. LFB will generate energy close to where it is needed (offices and fire stations) and reuse the heat from electricity generation to supply heating to nearby buildings. In addition, the Brigade is investing in sustainable energy sources – including solar, wind and photovoltaics – and developing policies to help it cope better with flooding, water resource shortages and overheating. Recycling paper, plastic and aluminum items, uniforms and even hose is high on the agenda, as well as saving water by reducing usage and recycling ‘grey’ water. Reducing the level of emissions from the fleet of fire engines is also a key.
I am pleased to say that LFB is already halfway to meeting the Mayor’s target. That is an achievement of which it can be proud. However, the Brigade – and the fire and rescue service nationally – cannot just work on internal issues. It must look at the wider policy agenda too.
Tackling climate change means that cities and buildings will have to be constructed in radically different ways. People will have to live closer to their places of work, travel less, and use lighter, simpler and more easily reused and recycled materials whenever possible. But in taking these measures, we will have to be very careful indeed.
The number of fires across the UK has fallen over many years – as buildings are built and refurbished with safer materials, as safety is designed-in more effectively, and as furniture, electrical goods and other building contents become safer too. But these gains were made in an era when we did not worry so much about the sustainability of the materials used and whether they could be recycled, or whether buildings were energy efficient.
In future, building materials will have to be locally produced, recycled or renewable; they will require low-energy use in their production, be thermally efficient during their operation, have low power demands from non-renewable sources, and generate their own power where possible. And buildings must reach the end of their design life – because that is when most of the environmental credit is gained. Resources and energy are used in producing the building materials and in construction, but savings are made when materials are reused at the end of their life during deconstruction.
All this is lost if a building burns down before the end of its life. Indeed, the survival of buildings for their entire life expectancy is fundamental to sustainability. We need designs that build-in inherent protection – for example, through effective compartmentation and the use of materials that slow fire spread. We need applied protection, including the much more widespread use of sprinklers in public buildings and domestic properties. Above all, we need the involvement of fire and rescue services at a much earlier stage in the design and planning process and the use of modern building materials.
For years, the fire and rescue service has been shifting its work away from simply fighting fires and dealing with emergencies, and towards community, advice and policy work that can make a big impact on the number of fires that start in the first place. But now we face a future in which, if we do not act, fires may remove many of the environmental benefits we could gain by a more sustainable design of buildings.
The service must work on building regulations, on design standards, and on planning, so that in future we balance safety and sustainability, and produce greener cities and communities with new methods of construction and low-cost building products.
Climate change threatens us all. But a sustainable future is a prize worth working for. The fire and rescue service must be part of that work, both in its internal operation of running its business and its service delivery.
Ken Knight CBE is the London fire commissioner
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