Staying (Net) Positive in a Climate of Crisis – By Abi Godsell

Any sustained period of disruption, or change invites wariness, exhaustion, and a kind of cynicism that would have us distrusting good news, and accepting bad without question.  Climate change, and the periods of debate and discourse, response and rebuttal, have intensified many of those feelings for many of us.  We’ve been living with the knowledge of dwindling natural resources, harsher weather events, and a sense of powerlessness to change the global emissions trajectory for so long, that climate despair seems inevitable.

There are constant calls to action, to use less and recycle more, to only shop green, to lobby for more progressive climate policies in our cities and countries. Urgent change is needed, but mostly on scales that seem far beyond the reach of individuals. It makes it easy to question the value of sorting our waste or re-using packaging, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

While we may not, personally, be able to de-carbonise our national grids, or reduce economic dependence on single-use plastics, we are in control of one very important, and very valuable thing; our perspective on the future.

April saw the GBCSA celebrate what World Health Day (7^th April) can mean for the built environment through the lens of ‘salutogenic design’ [link], buildings that are created with the goal of supporting wellness, not reducing sickness.

This is an important lens for our own thinking: when you define a goal around maximising the benefits, the good that we want to see, instead of minimising the harm, a different, more hopeful, vision of the future becomes possible.

One of the consequences of the pervasive awareness of a changing climate, is that we’re all fairly familiar with a new vocabulary: green, sustainable, resource-efficient, carbon-neutral, net-zero, net-positive. But sometimes, familiarity with these terms means that we don’t take the time to explore their nuances, and the tools they can offer us for thinking about a changing world.

The concept of the net positive building is one of these, that has a lot to share with us about buildings, and natural resources, and hope, if we let it.

Simply put, a net positive building (generally the way or ways in which a building is net-positive will be specified; net-positive for waste, for water, for carbon, or for ecology), is a building that generates more of a specific resource than it requires to meet its own needs. For example, a building with so much renewable energy generation capacity, and so much internal energy efficiency, that it is able to supply green electricity to it’s neighbours, or to a national grid.

Like a salutogenic building seeks to create a health-giving space, a net-positive building creates such an abundance of a natural resource (like renewable energy, measured in the lack of GHG emission associated fossil-fuel fired power-stations, or ecology, measured in the biodiversity of a site) that it not only balances what it has generated with what it has taken, but creates more.

Certified Net Positive buildings are still confined to exceptional outliers. Here at the GBCSA, we have only certified a handful of them.

Exceptional outliers matter, because they remind us of the resource-generative buildings that are possible, and will become more possible.

Net positive buildings matter, because they are an invitation to design, plan, finance, and construct towards maximising the good, seeking health, not only avoiding sickness.

Net positive thinking matters, because it is an invitation to hope for the best of, not only to fear the worst of, our changing climate future.

Learn more about one of GBCSA’s  most exciting recent Net Zero/Net Positive Certified Projects – an exceptional outlier taking us as close as we have ever been to ecology-wealthy buildings! DSM – Firmenich South Africa | GBCSA

Learn more about GBCSA’s Net Zero/Net Positive Tool (link)

By Abi Godsell, Research and Content Coordinator at GBCSA