CEBE – Civil Engineering and the Green Transition in the Built Environment is a ten-year research programme led by Professor Per Heiselberg and funded by the Villum Foundation with one billion Danish kroner. See the 16-page document.
CEBE brings together four Danish universities, Aalborg University, Aarhus University, the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Southern Denmark, as well as the prestigious ETH Zurich. Its aim is to transform construction by creating a circular, carbon-sequestering and resilient built environment that operates within planetary boundaries.
The programme is organised around seven interconnected research areas: absolute sustainability assessment; regenerative, circular and durable design; robust, low-carbon building materials; digitalisation and automation; climate-resilient infrastructure; sufficiency, well-being and energy efficiency; and extending the service life of buildings and infrastructure.
Its greatest innovation, however, lies not in simply bringing together advanced materials, AI, robotics, digital twins, structural monitoring, reuse and nature-based solutions. It lies in the intellectual framework that places all these tools under a single biophysical imperative. While many programmes celebrate incremental improvements, 20% fewer emissions or 30% less energy use, CEBE goes beyond the conventional paradigm of relative mitigation. The question is no longer how much we have reduced compared with today. It is something far more demanding: can buildings and infrastructure exist without exceeding the planet’s biophysical limits?
Declaration of interests: I am a member of the committee responsible for evaluating funding applications for doctoral and postdoctoral research projects. The submission deadline is 30 September.
PS – In a 2019 article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Raymond Pierrehumbert, a distinguished climate scientist with a physics degree from Harvard, a doctorate from MIT, and more than a decade at the University of Oxford, stated unequivocally: “With regard to the climate crisis, yes, it’s time to panic.” Panic alone, of course, cannot solve engineering problems. But it can compel us to ask questions commensurate with the climate emergency. That is the demanding standard I see reflected in CEBE’s scientific ambition.
