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01 / Introduction

As the global population rises and the built environment grows to accommodate it, the UN estimates that the construction industry accounts for 38% of global energy-based carbon emissions. 

Operational carbon emissions have dropped significantly in recent years, in part because of better technology creating energy efficiencies – but also because both government and industry have taken operational carbon emissions seriously. The UK Emissions Trading Scheme for energy-intensive industries, for example, essentially assigns a price to operational carbon.

By contrast, embodied carbon is harder to quantify and has suffered from a lack of consistent benchmarking, research and data. Data challenges weaken the government’s ability to set informed, regulation-backed reduction targets – but this will inevitably change, as embodied carbon’s share of a building’s total carbon output expands. According to the UK Green ºÚ¶´ÉçÇø Council (UKGBC), for new buildings embodied emissions from construction can account for up to half of the carbon impacts associated with the building over its lifecycle.

Reducing a project’s embodied carbon footprint is usually a desirable objective – clients are undoubtedly leading the way – but too often reduction potential is restricted due to cost constraints and a traditional, somewhat siloed approach to developing the initial conceptual designs. Finding optimal cost and carbon solutions requires the most carbon-intensive elements of a building to be centre stage at the outset.

Could the industry now be at a turning point?

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