Environmentalists were disappointed by the two-week United Nations-sponsored Copenhagen climate- change summit, which failed to set binding emissions targets. But the Danish conference, attended by 119 government heads, has helped stimulate engineers to promote themselves as low-carbon champions.
Regardless of the summit’s outcome, “we will continue to work on the [climate] cause we believe to be very important,” says Bertrand van Ee, president of the large Netherlands-based design firm DHV Group. “Our type of company needs to take a leadership position. We see the impact of climate change on the projects we do. We are confronted...at a very real level.”