Roadmap 2050: a practical guide to a prosperous, low-carbon Europe

Roadmap 2050 is commissioned by the European Climate Foundation and is based on extensive technical, economic and policy analyses conducted by five leading consultancies: Imperial College London, KEMA, McKinsey & Company, Oxford Economics and AMO. 

 

 

Watch the conference by Reinier de Graaf (AMO)

on 13th April 2010 in Brussels

 

 

 

 

or read the text

 

«One may wonder why an architect is at an event that is about emission reductions and a potential energy grid? Because so far I have to say that the performance of our profession in the field of sustainability hasn’t been that impressive. It’s generally limited to a number of token green walls at biennale exhibitions or some showcase vanity occasions.

This wasn’t always the case. Forty years ago, at the end of the 1960s, there was an American postwar modern architect called Buckminster Fuller who actually did projects linking the idea of sustainability to energy provision, and he addressed them at the appropriate scale, namely the scale of the planet. Since that time we have seen a strange incongruous trend where the awareness of the issue of sustainability has actually become, at least in our profession, inversely proportional to the scale of the action, which is painful. What is even more painful is that this trend is not limited to our profession.
 

Virtually every field of today’s market economy shows the same picture: green is good. But it is as though somehow, somewhere, an invisible hand keeps the scale of ambition firmly in check. I think this was nowhere more clear than at Copenhagen, where there was an unprecedented number of people, an unprecedented exposure, and nevertheless very little to show for it. The unfortunate consequence is that those who tried hardest end up being dammed the most.» […]

 

 

[full text aviable in www.oma.nl]