Dr. Oliver Kinnane:

Some kind of assessment is required of the building and when it was built. I think that building was from the early 2000s or the late 1990s. It is only 25 years old at most, so the idea you have to rip away 30% or 40% of the embodied carbon is already quite a loss. There are brownfield sites local to that building which are underutilised. I agree wholly we certainly should not be pushing development to greenfield sites as a result of this but we need to be very careful about what we demolish and have a proper assessment of it. In other countries, in cities like Brussels, much greater justification is required before demolition is allowed.