When tour guide and wildlife photographer Gaurav Ramnarayanan set out on safari on the evening of January 24, 2024, he wasn’t looking for tigers.
The 25-year-old was leading a private tour in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Kaziranga National Park, a 430 square-kilometer wildlife reserve in India’s northeastern Assam state. While it’s home to the largest tiger population in the region, sightings are rare and the park is better known for its other wildlife.
He began driving, turning a corner before stopping the car in its tracks: there was a tiger on the road. “Initially when I saw him, he looked really white and didn’t look like a normal (Bengal) tiger,” says Ramnarayanan. “I’ve seen enough tigers to realize at the first glance that this one was not regular.”
His suspicions proved right when he looked at the predator through his camera lens: with strawberry-blonde stripes, the big cat was unmistakably a rare “golden” tiger.
Golden tigers — also known as golden tabby tigers or strawberry tigers — are not a subspecies: they’re the result of a genetic mutation that changes the color of their fur.
And while beautiful, their presence has a dark side.
Read more at the link in our bio.
📸: Gaurav Ramnarayanan
Progress towards sustainable construction is uneven yet gathering momentum. The UK government has launched Great British Energy, aimed at publicly owned clean energy generation. While not construction-specific, its success by 2030 could transform the carbon footprint of construction by providing a cleaner grid. A stable low-carbon energy supply underpins sustainable building design and supports net zero whole life carbon ambitions across the built environment.
In the United States, financial close on Massachusetts’ largest battery energy storage project promises better grid stability for low carbon design. Enhanced storage capacity creates more reliable access to renewable electricity, improving whole life carbon assessment outcomes for housing and commercial development. This shift towards energy-efficient buildings demonstrates how infrastructure investment feeds directly into sustainable architecture and sustainable building practices worldwide.
Macquarie’s US$350 million investment in solar and storage via Nexamp reinforces the integration of renewable building materials and decentralised clean energy into urban development. Sourcing electricity from localised systems allows eco-design for buildings to achieve measurable carbon footprint reduction. For large-scale projects, life cycle cost thinking in construction is increasingly impossible without accounting for such infrastructure, linked directly to lifecycle assessment and future BREEAM v7 updates.
Hydrostor has attracted major funding for compressed air energy storage, providing long-duration capacity essential for decarbonising the built environment. This kind of resilience directly supports sustainable construction by ensuring clean energy availability through both build and operational phases. It also complements whole life carbon strategies, reducing reliance on fossil fuels while supporting environmental sustainability in construction and measurable building lifecycle performance.
On resilience, Flood Risk America has developed an automatic flood gate that eliminates the need for manual intervention. This technology represents circular construction strategies in disaster adaptation, ensuring eco-friendly construction can withstand climate extremes. As urban areas pursue sustainable urban development, such measures demonstrate how resource efficiency in construction can align with climate resilience.
Warnings from the Environmental Services Association highlight the hidden risks in electrification. Battery disposal fires, costing billions annually, underline the environmental impact of construction supply chains beyond embodied carbon in materials and end-of-life reuse in construction. Safe disposal and sustainable material specification are critical to maintaining environmental product declarations (EPDs) credibility, reinforcing the broader shift toward circular economy in construction.
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