On most days, the Ghost Train of Ely, Nevada is filled with tourists, but on a sunny October afternoon, it was filled with a small group of locals and environmentalists to see how the area between the HiLine and Mainline railways in central Nevada could be filled with a million cubic yards of rubble during a seven-year industrial operation that would excavate a nearby mountaintop and further deplete the underground water supply.
All of it would be for a 1,000-megawatt, closed-loop pumped storage project—a nearly century-old technology undergoing a resurgence as part of the nation’s clean energy transition.
Closed loop pumped storage projects turn electricity-generating turbines with water, which is often acquired by pumping it from aquifers. But in the drought-stricken Southwest, groundwater is in short supply.
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📸: Alex Gould
Sustainable construction is shifting from voluntary ambition to core risk management. The UN’s warning that current pledges still imply about 2.8°C of warming strengthens the case for sustainable building design, whole life carbon assessment and life cycle cost modelling at the earliest project stage.
Post-drought subsidence risks show why climate resilience must sit beside embodied carbon, whole life carbon and building lifecycle performance, particularly where rewetting can shrink, swell or destabilise soils beneath foundations.
The redesigned £249m Bridgwater Tidal Barrier underlines the same point: green infrastructure must withstand flood risk, inflation and long-term operational pressures.
Decarbonising the built environment is moving into construction plant and site logistics. The Lower Thames Crossing is becoming a major test for hydrogen-powered equipment, with JCB and Toyota pursuing combustion and fuel-cell routes to reduce diesel dependence. The sector’s priority is no longer abstract net zero carbon messaging, but practical carbon footprint reduction across machinery, fuel supply and delivery. Stronger lifecycle assessment, resource efficiency in construction and low carbon design will be needed to prove real gains in the carbon footprint of construction.
Low-carbon heat and materials are gaining commercial weight. The National Geothermal Centre says the UK could unlock 10GW of geothermal heat by 2050, supporting energy-efficient buildings, low carbon building schemes and net zero carbon buildings where grid capacity is constrained. Holcim’s renovated Zug headquarters points to circular economy in construction, low carbon construction materials and sustainable material specification as boardroom-level priorities.
Claims around green concrete and green building products need robust environmental product declarations (EPDs), scrutiny of embodied carbon in materials and credible routes to end-of-life reuse in construction. BREEAM, BREEAM v7 and net zero whole life carbon standards will increasingly shape eco-design for buildings, circular construction strategies and environmental sustainability in construction.
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