Activists have raised concerns about Shell’s plans to demolish rather than upgrade or repurpose its five storey Aberdeen based headquarters.
The company notified Aberdeen city council of the plans in mid-July; since then over 40 architects, experts and activists have signed an open letter criticising the fossil fuel company’s plan.
“The environmental impact assessment (EIA) conducted for Shell fails to measure or consider the carbon emissions relating to demolition in any way,” reads the open letter.
It continues: “Yet the emissions involved in processing, recycling and transporting all the elements of the demolished building elements will be vast, especially given the huge amounts of concrete in the existing structure.”
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In the letter the activists requested that the design for the new building be available to the public, that a full life cycle assessment of the building is conducted and that Shell conducts an environmental assessment that looks at the carbon emissions associated with constructing and demolishing the building.
It follows the decision by levelling up, housing and communities secretary Michael Gove to ban Marks & Spencer from demolishing its flagship Oxford Street store but the retailer contested this, with CEO Stuart Machin saying that “the suggestion that the decision [was] on the grounds of sustainability [was] nonsensical”.
Planning experts including Mace Construct had previously called on the government to amend the planning process to encourage retrofitting of commercial buildings over demolition.
Professor of urban collaboration at Northumbria University and honorary professor at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University Richard Laing told The Guardian that he felt the carbon emissions associated with Shell’s demolition plans were “neither affordable nor acceptable”.
It comes following a range of opposition to the fossil fuel company, with a range of organisations including the LGBT awards dropping them as sponsors.
