Authored by Robert Kay, Arup’s Americas Climate and Sustainability Services Leader
Building on our partnership with The Climate Registry over the last year at New York Climate Week and COP27, Arup is thrilled to reconvene with our partners in climate action in Los Angeles for the Climate Leadership Conference. Given the clarion call to action in the latest IPCC report, it is vital that we come together to urgently accelerate our share pathways to net zero while building climate resilience. What is also clear is that there is now significant momentum and critical investments in the climate transition, empowered by all levels of government. To accelerate a clean energy transition, for example, we’ll need to scale our electricity grids and ensure they’re powered by more renewables including offshore wind. Investments like this are driven by the realization that there is a strong alignment between business, government, and nonprofits. There is also a broader recognition that this moment requires an equitable climate transition for all communities and its members. By centering equity in everything that we do, we can also address the most pressing challenges through solutions that will allow us to realize climate-resilient communities and infrastructure.
To make real progress, faster, we need to work together. At Arup, we are striving to find a better way by embodying our mission that sustainable development is everything. We action this by taking a multidisciplinary approach to all projects, enabling us to collaborate, partner, and ideate solutions that in turn address the most complex challenges presented by climate change. By working together, we’re also able to bring ideas into tangible reality. It is this drive we endeavor to shape a better world by making sustainability happen and we do it with the mindset of ensuring that we also have the fundamental data that enable us to derive actionable insights that support a truly equitable transition. Bring the climate transition to life through practical action that distinguishes every person who is part of the CLC community.
My colleague Heather Rosenberg, Arup’s Americas Resilience Skills Leader, will be speaking on just this during the panel discussion on realizing equitable and resilient decarbonized communities, focusing on the complex relationship between decarbonizing existing building stock to create a net zero future while constructing and preserving affordable housing. Similarly, Arup Principal and Fellow Erin McConahey will be joining us at the conference to discuss lessons learned from our firm’s commitment to conducting whole lifecycle carbon assessments for all significant building projects as well as the related data collection measures. Erin will also explore the need for enhanced standards to consistently track and verify decarbonization at a granular scale in the built environment, which will aid the acceleration of industry-wide decision making around low carbon solutions.
We recognize the value that data can bring to our partnerships and collaborations, and how those insights can help us reimagine our fundamental theory of change, expanding what progress can look like. This is the reason we are looking forward to gathering at CLC where we can shape, strengthen, and deepen the value of our relationships and their ability to drive transformational change.
We can still chart a path for a future that is not predetermined, and we believe that the last decades of climate investments, policy and activism have made a difference and will continue to as we realize tangible action across generations. I look forward to being in the room with you this May and discovering what it is that energizes us to do this important, collective work. It is our relationships that will get us to where we all need to be, at the speed we need to do it.
Arup is a sustainable development leader and Platinum Sponsor of the 2023 Climate Leadership Conference and Awards.