City Pollution – Old Habits Die Hard
In the sustainability study group this morning we discussed the Construction industry and current lack of regulations regarding control of plant vehicle pollution. The following link takes you to an article that discusses the problems with construction plant pollutants in London and the challenge of regulating them in an industry where enforcing higher standards would generate absurd replacement costs.
It turns out that a lot of plant equipment currently used in London is Red diesel powered and outrageously inefficient. One of the Geo boffins told me they had recently received some environmental data from a site showing that it currently takes one piling rig 1000 litres of diesel to bore every 60m deep pile. There are 74 of them on the project!
The construction industry might grind to a halt if the Government begins to pay as much attention to plant equipment engines as they do VW diesel cars.
Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog 
Funny you mention this Tom, I was considering a thesis topic on this subject. I am thinking more on the impact of deliveries on projects in central London. My site is estimating over 200 a day or one every three minutes, all of which will be diesel.
It’s an interesting topic area, and not a question of if you do X or Y to clean up the act but how you do it, because it will come. The aero industry now fly quieter, less polluting aircraft, which didn’t improve passenger travel times or comfort and it didn’t happen overnight but the rule changes on new airframes did. The shift in fuel type and change to noise and particulate pollution might similarly do little for a client in terms of final constructed asset but the act of construction itself will undoubtedly evolve. I would suggest a thesis that seeks to address the UK construction industry’s challenges would be too broad and be thrown out/forcibly modified. There are, however, many much narrower scope options that might be very worthy.