Roger that.
Energy and environment expert Dr Roger Harrabin on why ‘clean economy’ beats ‘net zero’, and our once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink the places in which the everyday plays out.
The embodiment of carbon: Roger Harrabin with Concrete Man, part of a landmark Eden Project exhibition he curated with artist Simon Bingle. The Art of Cutting Carbon highlighted the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the manufacture of everyday materials.
Image courtesy of Dr Roger Harrabin
PEOPLE
For more than three decades, Roger Harrabin has been one of the UK’s most trusted voices on energy and the environment. His career tracks the evolution of environmental journalism, something he can claim to have influenced significantly. When he began broadcasting about green issues in the 1980s, they were often far from the headlines. However, by 2004, when the BBC created the position of Energy and Environment Analyst specifically for him, they had become a fixture in mainstream discourse. He held the post until 2022, shaping national understanding of climate change, energy policy, and sustainability for millions of viewers and listeners.
Harrabin’s work has ranged from reports for Newsnight on the uncertainties of climate forecasting and geoengineering, to founding and presenting BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth. Over the years, he’s earned awards across print, television, and radio, including the Media Natura Award for his documentary Gas Muzzlers, which examined America’s green energy investment under President Bush.
For all his global perspective, Harrabin’s environmental worldview is deeply personal, and so too is his perspective on the built environment. His father was a builder, and both of his brothers still work in the construction trade in one form or another.
That background perhaps explains his close connection with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), with which he has collaborated to champion sustainable design and also served as a judge for the RIBA Reinvention Award, which celebrates the creative reuse of existing buildings.
Roger Harrabin has been a global pioneer of environmental reporting
On 'net-zero'
It’s too hard to explain. People don’t connect with it. I’d much rather we talked about a clean economy, because everyone understands what that means.
The language of change
We begin by addressing changing public perceptions, challenges, and the potential for achieving net zero. “People’s environmental support is broad, but it’s still quite shallow,” says Harrabin. He feels the public enthusiasm for net zero conceals a fundamental confusion about what it actually means.
The term itself is part of the problem. “I dislike it,” he admits. “It’s too hard to explain. People don’t connect with it. I’d much rather we talked about a clean economy, because everyone understands what that means”.
When politicians or campaigners reach for phrases such as ‘scope three emissions’, they inadvertently alienate the very people they need to persuade. ‘Net zero’ was a technical concept developed during the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and delivered without enough thought about how it would be received by the public. As a result, it has become fertile ground for confusion and misinformation, contributing to the likelihood that net zero targets will be missed.
“The public is suspicious, or even hostile, if they don’t understand something.”
Keeping up with the Joneses
Harrabin’s advice to policymakers is deceptively simple: “Talk about things people can see and feel, like cleaner air and cheaper bills”.
It’s a communication strategy that ties into the need to localise and humanise climate action. “We need trusted sources, community leaders, doctors, and even our neighbours.
“People listen to those they know, and for many it’s not so much about saving the planet as improving the street they live on.”
The growing interest in heat pumps, solar panels, and retrofits, he says, shows that climate action becomes real when it’s visible, and even aspirational.
Are such features becoming a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ status symbol? That might not yet be the case, says Harrabin, but it could be something that develops in the future. What people do understand, and clearly want, is “efficient, liveable buildings”.
It is clear to him is that people care about where they live and where they work, but too often the interests of the planet and nature are balanced against the cost of infrastructure.
On communication strategy
People listen to those they know, and for many it’s not so much about saving the planet as improving the street they live on.
Rethinking growth
Behind this lies what Roger terms an obsession with growth at almost all costs. Too often, he says, economic expansion is measured in terms of concrete poured or square footage built, rather than wellbeing or sustainability.
“We frame debates as either/or,” he says, “swift bricks or cheaper housing, HS2 or bats”.
He refers to the Sheephouse Wood Bat Protection structure, which is estimated to cost upwards of £100million, protecting endangered species along a stretch of the HS2 route. This has, in some quarters, been used as an example of environmental protections standing in the way of infrastructure improvements, something he roundly rejects: “It’s a false choice. With imagination, we can have both progress and protection.”
He warns, though, that it is important to take a global perspective, recalling a visit to China some years ago. Following a tour of a brand new, south-facing, glass-fronted skyscraper, he asked how the significant cooling demands of such a building would be met. His host directed his attention to a nearby, and just as newly finished, coal-fired power station.
“What we do pales into insignificance when compared to India and China,” Harrabin reminds us, “but just as their consumption of fossil fuels was growing rapidly not long ago, their embracing of renewable technology is now just as rapid and impressive.”
India is set to double the total floor space of its commercial buildings by 2050, and there is a recognition that these new buildings must be more energy efficient than their predecessors. Harrabin cites the architect Peter Fisher, who said that we have lost the art of designing solid facades – and points out that, for millennia, Indians had been constructing buildings to be extremely efficient at dissipating heat.
Drawing inspiration from architectural historian Barnabas Calder, Harrabin sees the built environment as a mirror of humanity’s energy story, from foraging and farming to fossil fuels.
“The question now,” he suggests, “is whether we can design our way into a fourth energy age, one defined by clean power and a reconnection between people and nature”.
On renewable energy
The question, now, is whether we can design our way into a fourth energy age, one defined by clean power and a reconnection between people and nature.
Solar thermal power station in Dunhuang, China – which has rapidly embraced renewable tech.
Pandemic catalyst
The lockdown period, he believes, unexpectedly accelerated that transition. “COVID was terrible, but it forced us to rethink how we live and work,” he says. The result is a new understanding of flexibility, one that neither romanticises working from home nor insists on returning to the old office routine. “The idea of 100% of people working from home simply isn’t going to happen, and some people are wholly unsuited to it, but many thrive with at least some element of home working. The hybrid model is here to stay.”
That shift has profound consequences for design, and offices such as games designer Double Eleven’s HQ ‘Boho X’ in Middlesbrough. The building was designed with wellbeing and collaboration as the key considerations, featuring break-out spaces, a spacious auditorium, a fully equipped staff gym, and even a classroom, as well as a market hall providing healthy, subsidised food.
Roger talks enthusiastically about the new Aurora building in Glasgow, where its net-zero credentials are front and centre alongside employee benefits such as rooftop terraces, wellness areas, and even podcast studios. The fact that it boasts employee showers and over 200 bike racks shows, for him, how far building design has come in considering both the environment and employees.
“Offices are now a sales pitch to their own employees, built in concrete,” he explains. “If firms want people back, they have to offer something better.
“They have to be spaces of interaction, not just production.”
The power of reinvention
But these are still new builds, and it’s in retrofitting and reusing existing space where Harrabin really sees the chance to make a difference. Even the most energy-efficient new building will compare poorly with successful attempts to retrofit existing buildings, due primarily to the embodied carbon of those existing structures.
He’s even floated the idea of “higher taxes on rubble,” not as a punitive measure but as a way of recognising the hidden cost of demolition. “Every time we tear down a building, we throw away embodied energy and heritage. Retrofitting, by contrast, keeps that value in play.”
As ever, Harrabin has the facts to back up his argument. According to Economist Impact’s Radical Retrofit study, 69% of organisations have shifted their business mix towards retrofit in the past three years. This spirit of renewal underpinned his involvement with the creation of, and role as a judge, for RIBA’s Reinvention Award, which celebrates the creative reuse of existing buildings. A standout for him was the inaugural winner, Houlton School in Rugby (see image below), which saw the Grade II-listed Rugby Radio Station transformed into a modern secondary school retaining the elegance of the original building.
“It’s a perfect example of how heritage and sustainability can reinforce one another,” he says.
On Houlton School
It’s a perfect example of how heritage and sustainability can reinforce one another.
The human element
For all his career spent covering policy and technology, Harrabin insists that sustainability is ultimately about people. The key, he says, is to show how change improves everyday lives, how it can mean cleaner air, safer streets, warmer homes, and stronger communities.
“Climate action only works when it feels personal,” he says. “If we can root it in the things people already care about – their health, family, and daily lives – then we’ll have the momentum we need.”
That focus on co-benefits echoes our own ethos: the belief that design for the planet must also be designed for people. For Harrabin, it’s not a communications tactic, it’s the essence of progress. “Keep it human,” he says. “Avoid jargon. Build spaces that bring us together. That’s how we move forward.”
If we can root [climate action] in the things people already care about – their health, family, and daily lives – then we’ll have the momentum we need.
Extra, extra: did you know...?
Roger Harrabin began his career on the Coventry Evening Telegraph, specialising in reporting on the city’s ethnic minority population (previously largely ignored in the media). At BBC Radio London he revealed how the Met was training riot control officers using Roman Army tactics; and in 2015, his report on renewable energy in Malawi, including a phone-charging cooking stove, got 22 million hits.
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