Embodied Carbon… What a Waste of Time
Embodied carbon from the construction and refurbishment of buildings currently makes up 20% of UK built environment emissions.
Embodied carbon, also known as upfront carbon, is gripping the industry.
Everyone’s talking about it, with more and more projects requesting to see the data from manufacturers.
The products and services that we use for our buildings are responsible for a lot of previously unaccounted carbon.
Making bricks and steel creates vast amounts of CO2, with cement alone causing 8% of global emissions.
While many leading developers and infrastructure organisations measure and optimise the embodied carbon footprint of their projects, it is far from being mainstream practice.
It takes a lot of resources to collect and publish the embodied carbon data accurately as you need to have access to all of the data associated to the factory and transportation, as well as know all of the products material breakdown and engage with your whole supply chain.
It’s a lot of work.
Is it all really necessary?
Background
For a while now, there has been growing demand for embodied carbon data of the materials and products that make up our buildings.
The Greater London Authority has already adopted embodied carbon rules.
Now, Bath and North East Somerset Council (B&NES) has become the first council outside London to introduce embodied carbon limits for new build projects.
Industry leads are currently backing proposals for legal limits on embodied carbon (huge kudos to Will Arnold).
This would see an amendment to the Building Regulations known as “Part Z” which would enforce:
- Construction firms to assess and report on whole life carbon on all non-residential projects over 1,000m2 from 2023 and residential projects from 2025
- Mandatory limits for upfront carbon emissions on all building projects over 1,000m2 from 2027
Alongside the proposed Part Z, exists the UK’s first Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard. Leading industry organisations BBP, BRE, the Carbon Trust, CIBSE, IStructE, LETI, RIBA, RICS, and UKGBC have joined forces to champion this initiative.
The UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard will enable industry to robustly prove their built assets are net zero carbon and in line with our nation’s climate targets.
So,
Is calculating embodied carbon a waste of time?
Well, if you are a manufacturer or supplier who has only just started looking at embodied carbon, I’ve got bad news for you…
It’s just the beginning
The construction sector is responsible for ~40% of the UK’s 505million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.
Embodied carbon from the construction and refurbishment of buildings currently makes up 20% of UK built environment emissions.
The focus of the conversation so far has predominately been on the more carbon intensive aspects of buildings, such as the materials that make up the foundations and structures, steel, cement, that sort of thing.
Well now the spotlight has landed firmly on the MEP services and specifically the HVAC sector.
As HVAC systems have multiple components, their supply chains are far more complex than compared to that of steel or cement, so calculating the embodied carbon can be quite tricky.
The prospect of obtaining EPDs can therefore be quite daunting.
So, the team at CIBSE (very much championed by Clara Bagenal George) have usefully come up with TM65; this is a calculation methodology to make manufacturers lives easier.
The document provides guidance on how to use environmental product declarations (EPDs) to assess the embodied carbon of building services equipment; and where EPDs are not available, it provides guidance on how to estimate the embodied carbon.
Operational Carbon + Embodied Carbon = Whole Life Carbon.
Nice and Easy, just like Proud Mary.
So what’s missing?
Well, just like in Proud Mary, there certainly is a beginning, and a finish.
But unlike Proud Mary, we certainly are not rolling, rolling.
We are far from it.
We are very much linear.
That’s what’s missing.
No one likes funerals.
And yet our industry is full of them.
Buildings all over the UK are being knocked down.
Demolished.
What an incredible amount of waste.
We can no longer kid ourselves by calling buildings ‘sustainable’ based solely on the design.
We need to start looking at our built environment as a materials bank.
We need to transition to a circular economy.
There is no end
By 2050, cities will be home to two thirds of the population, consume 75% of the world’s natural resources, produce 50% of global waste and over 60% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Just yesterday the World Green Building Council’s launched the Circular Built Environment Playbook — a critical guide to drive the uptake of circularity world wide.
The core principles of a circular economy in the built environment can be summarised as follows:
- Reduction in consumption of materials and resources
- Optimisation of lifespan for material and product use
- Design for disassembly, reuse and recycling, and the elimination of all waste
- Regeneration of nature
The products and services that we use for our buildings are responsible for a lot of previously unaccounted carbon.
The raw materials we are extracting are finite.
In the not too distant future embodied carbon will be regulated.
Projects will soon have carbon budgets as well as financial budgets.
Any and all materials that can be re-used should be.
If we look into the WBCSD and Arup report on Net-Zero buildings, we see circular economy feature heavily — but also some very unique and brilliant examples of how we can change the way we think about MEP systems.
The need for Embodied Carbon data is very real, and very pressing.
As an industry, we must come together to collaborate and share ideas on innovative ways to design, build and use our buildings.
We can no longer design for deconstruction, or rely on demolition.
We must move to design for disassembly and re-use.
Think about all the recycling you do at home.
Now apply that to your work.
Furiously rinsing out your peanut butter jars before putting them in the recycling bin?
Why stop there?
What’s not getting recycled on your projects that could be?
Desks? Glass? Metal? Wiring? Carpet Tiles? Cable Trays? Wood? Refrigerants?
Food for thought…
