Reducing carbon footprint of the construction sector
Announcing our investment in Kompozite — a digital platform for sustainable building design.
Back in 2002, we were forewarned by French President Jacques Chirac when he stated the following: “Our house is burning down while we look the other way”.
At the time, large wildfires were ravaging Australia with countries debating on the responsibility of climate change.
Fast forward 20 years: the more things change, the more they stay the same….
We are now less than eight years away from not being able to undo our mistakes on climate change.
How can we rapidly and drastically re-route our current trajectory to achieve the holy grail of carbon neutrality by 2050?
Today, building and construction are the two main contributors to carbon emissions, collectively responsible for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions. (Seems like a good place to start if we want to have a systemic impact.)
We expect to add an entire New York City to the world, every month, for 40 years.
As the world’s population rapidly approaches 10 billion, the construction sector has a crucial role to play in responding to the impending climate emergency as the global building stock is expected to double by 2060. We expect to add 2.4 trillion ft2 (230 billion m2) of new floor area to the global building stock, the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the world, every month, for 40 years.
Upfront carbon — the carbon caused in construction by the materials production and construction phases — is expected to represent half of the entire carbon footprint of new construction.
With the stage being set, professionals must drastically change the way they design and construct buildings. And hopefully, with new regulations around the world (like RE2020 in France) banning some materials and the sector’s traditional way of functioning, this transition will be forced to accelerate.
Why is the construction sector such a massive contributor to carbon emissions?
In construction, carbon emissions are released not only during the operational life of a building (heating, lights, etc..) — accounting for 70% of total emissions, but also during the manufacturing, transportation, construction and end of life phases (remaining 30%).
It’s clear that if we want to lower buildings’ carbon footprint, we have to focus on how we imagine and design them, in order to reduce emissions during construction phases as well as optimize them (or eradicate them entirely) during operations. The good news is that the potential for innovation in this space is incredible, thanks to new ways of designing buildings associated with new sustainable materials.
In fact, embodied carbon emissions are affected by many factors : these range from the type and size of the building to the materials used and the associated carbon intensity of their manufacturing processes (production, transportation, deconstruction..). The kind of stuff we decide during planning and design phases.
But do we have the tools to make it happen?
Kompozite & why we invested in
Enter Kompozite: a unique digital platform geared towards building designers that suggests the best solutions for each project, in just a few clicks.
Kompozite will help the 2.5 million building designers (architects, constructors, real estate developers), switch from decade-old techniques to a brand new and more sustainable way to build.
Design is the most important factor in determining carbon emissions over a building’s lifetime. By the time the construction process begins, the majority of decisions affecting the project’s GHG emissions are already locked in. The ability to influence a building’s lifetime emissions is highest very early in a project and before construction has started.
Fundamental design decisions (new construction versus upgrading, building size and shape, level of insulation, and floor-space flexibility) have a significant impact on emissions for decades to come.
Kompozite’s solution will help the entire sector by accelerating the transition to a more sustainable way to design buildings. By developing a digital platform which compiles materials datas for every building component, Kompozite automatically generates thousands of optimized constructive solutions according to users’ specific constraints and technical regulations — in a second! — enabling professionals, from chief engineer, architect or eco designer, to have access and select much faster more sustainable materials for their construction.
Welcome Kompozite to our AFI family of activists creating a better tomorrow!
At AFI Ventures, we believe in a world where innovation is a tool for positive change, the foundation to building a sustainable balance between economic growth and positive impact.
We commit to empowering entrepreneurs standing at the intersection of ‘for-profit’ and ‘for-good’, reimagining fairer & more sustainable ‘2.0’s for every sector of the economy — because we believe in the power of well-intentioned entrepreneurs to drive the big changes our society wants & needs.
