The need for embodied carbon regulation
Buildings and construction form a substantial portion of UK carbon emissions. They contribute both operational carbon emissions (due to energy and water use), and embodied carbon emissions (due to the use of construction materials).
For a long time, operational carbon has made up the majority of most buildings’ emissions. However this has changed over the last couple of decades as more of our energy has come from renewables, a trend set to continue and likely to see operational carbon drop to zero within a couple of decades.
Alongside decarbonising the grid, we have seen emissions limits regularly tightened in Part L, architects and engineers designing more energy-efficient buildings, and manufacturers investing in producing more energy-efficient components.
However for embodied carbon we have stalled. Project focusses have typically been on reducing cost and time, rather than reducing material use. As such, in a well-designed low-energy building, embodied carbon emissions now make up more than half of the total carbon emitted across the building’s expected lifetime.
In Europe, embodied carbon emissions have been limited in The Netherlands since 2018, and the same is scheduled for Denmark, Sweden, France and Finland between 2023 and 2027. In the USA, California, Minnesota and Oregon already have state-level carbon requirements; and the federal government is looking at draft legislation for materials limits on public projects.
As co-authors of the proposed Part Z, we believe that the time is now to introduce embodied carbon regulation in the UK.
In the capital, the London Plan already requires carbon assessments to be undertaken on every major project as part of the planning application.
When you read the industry support statements on this website, you’ll see that many in the built environment are doing this already.
And the tools we need are either established, or shortly arriving: such as the RICS Professional Statement on Whole Life Carbon for the Built Environment, the Built Environment Carbon Database (BECD), and a plethora of choices of carbon calculator to aid good decision making (such as The Structural Carbon Tool, developed by the IStructE with Elliott Wood).
Part Z proposes dates that phase in requirements at a pace that we believe to be achievable – consistent with international precedent and what we know about our industry.
But the important thing is that we must introduce this now, rather than waiting several more years. This is vital if we want to do to embodied carbon what Part L did to operational carbon.
