World Construction Network

Daily Newsletter

11 August 2023

Daily Newsletter

Stevenage Borough Council’s planning committee has approved the development of a new life sciences campus named Elevate Quarter in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK.

With this approval, granted to UBS Asset Management and Reef Group, construction on the complex is projected to begin later this year.

The first phase of the project is aimed to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The £900m life sciences complex will have more than one million square feet of laboratory, office, and good manufacturing practices space. It will be located alongside GSK’s research and development (R&D) facility and the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst biomedical plant.

The 15-building complex will be centred on a central green and connected by a network of walkways and open spaces. It is set to create up to 5,000 new jobs.

The new campus' buildings will be used for various purposes, including R&D laboratories and offices, as well as training, innovation, and collaboration spaces.

Other amenities include employee and visitor spaces with on-site restaurants, cafés, and leisure facilities.

Three green transport hubs will also be built, each with multistorey vehicle parking, e-bike rental spaces, and storage for bikes and scooters.

Reef CEO Piers Slater said: “The approval of our new life science campus in Stevenage further cements its position as Europe’s leading cluster for advanced therapies.

“Stevenage is ideally positioned to attract world-class talent and the campus will facilitate further collaboration between major multinationals and biotechs [companies].

“The campus has been designed to allow these life science businesses to grow and scale up over time and to create an open and accessible environment for both employees and the wider public.”

ESG 2.0 marks a shift towards stricter environmental rules

ESG is moving into a different era, which we call ESG 2.0. While ESG 1.0 was driven by voluntary corporate action, spurred by pressure from activist consumers and investors, ESG 2.0 is being driven by a new wave of government policies. The EU has taken the regulatory lead, with rules introduced or in the pipeline that will price emissions, regulate the use of the terms ‘ESG’ and ‘sustainability’ in marketing materials, and make ESG reporting mandatory. The US has taken a different approach, favoring less regulation and more financial support in the form of tax breaks for clean industry (renewables plus nuclear and hydrogen). China is planning to expand its emissions trading system to more sectors, decarbonize its heavy industry, and ramp up its use of renewables. The new policy direction is mainly motivated by the ambition to hit net zero emissions targets. But on top of this, governments are now competing for clean industry and trying to challenge China’s leadership on the production of the world’s green technologies such as solar panels and batteries, as well as the production and refinement of materials needed for energy transition such as lithium. These driving forces are leading to policy that will impact every sector, not just heavy industry, and will keep ESG near the top of the regulatory agenda over the longer term.