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References/Links:
Alliance for Sustainable Building Products https://asbp.org.uk/
The ASBP is looking to increase knowledge sharing around embodied carbon across the construction industry. It runs a series of webinars and masterclasses covering embodied carbon and EPD which are available to listen to after the event, and has provided a number of detailed briefing papers around embodied carbon and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD).
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Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) https://www.architectscan.org/about
ACAN is a network of individuals within architecture and related built environment professions taking action to address the twin crises of climate and ecological breakdown, and focusses on political campaigning and lobbying, direct action and public engagement, and research and knowledge sharing. ACAN has a thematic group looking at embodied carbon, working to drive down carbon emissions from the construction sector by calling for new regulations and policies to control embodied carbon.
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Architecture 2030 https://architecture2030.org/
Architecture 2030’s mission is to rapidly transform the global built environment from the major contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to a central part of the solution to the climate crisis. It provides a number of resources for embodied carbon, and hosts the 2030 challenge for embodied carbon.
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BRE
BRE provides a number of resources related to embodied carbon: The BRE Green Guide offers free registration to access an online resource which provides embodied carbon data for common construction specifications for different building types. The BRE EPD Verification Scheme provides free online access to all BRE EPD. BRE IMPACT® is a database and methodology which can be used by approved tools to calculate embodied carbon and LCA for use in BREEAM.
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Building Transparency https://buildingtransparency.org
Building Transparency's core mission is to provide the open access data and tools necessary to enable broad and swift action across the building industry in addressing embodied carbon's role in climate change. It hosts the free, open source Embodied Carbon Calculator for Construction (EC3) tool that helps measure embodied carbon and track the impact of individual materials. Currently focussed on North American EPD, EC3 makes it easier to perform comparisons between specific materials and see potential reductions based just on which cement, or steel, or insulation choice is made.
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Carbon Leadership Forum https://carbonleadershipforum.org/
The forum is based in the US, but has chapters in the UK. Its aim is to decarbonise the built environment, and it provides a wide range of resources and research on embodied carbon as well as supporting a number of initiatives such as EC3. It also hosts the Carbon Leadership Forum Community (previously the Embodied Carbon Network) which is available to full members of the Forum.
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Centre of Industrial Energy, Materials and Products (CIE-MAP) http://ciemap.leeds.ac.uk/
CIE-MAP conducts research to identify all the opportunities along the product supply chain that ultimately deliver a reduction in industrial energy use, and provides a number of useful briefings on embodied carbon.
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CIRIA
CIRIA now hosts many of the older WRAP publications for construction. Free registration is required to access them.
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Circular Ecology https://circularecology.com/resources.html
Craig Jones provides lots of resources including his Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE Database), an Embodied Carbon calculator for concrete and webinars and videos.
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Construction Declares
Construction Declares allows the construction industry to sign agreed declarations to address climate change. Started in the UK with Architects Declare groups are now active around the world, and covering Architects, Building Services Engineers, Civil Engineers, Contractors, Landscape Architects, Project Managers and Structural Engineers.
Some presentations from an Architects Declare event in February 2020 are provided at https://www.architectsdeclare.com/resources#architects-declare-resources
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Construction Products Association
For a simple guide to life cycle assessment of products and the presentation of data
through EPD see the Construction Product Associations’ Guide to understanding the
environmental impacts of construction products.
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Embodied Carbon in Buildings: Measurement, Management and Mitigation (Springer)
This book by Francesco Pomponi, Catherine De Wolf and Alice Moncaster provides a single-source reference for whole life embodied impacts of buildings. The comprehensive and persuasive text, written by over 50 invited experts from across the world, offers an indispensable resource both to newcomers and to established practitioners in the field. Ultimately it provides a persuasive argument as to why embodied impacts are an essential aspect of sustainable built environments.
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Embodied Carbon - Status Quo and Suggested Roadmap (Scotland)
Report focused on the Scottish context, covering context, metrics, tools & datasets, design guidance, current gaps, mitigation options, industry views and a roadmap. https://zerowastescotland.org.uk/sites/default/files/Embodied_carbon_spreads%20final.pdf
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Endeavour Centre
This organisation based in Ontario, Canada, has some useful resources including videos introducing embodied carbon. http://endeavourcentre.org/videos/
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Greater London Authority (GLA)
The Draft London Plan Policy SI 2 sets out a requirement for developments to calculate and reduce Whole Life-cycle Carbon (WLC) emissions. This requirement applies to planning applications which are referred to the Mayor, but WLC assessments are encouraged for all major applications. Guidance has been published here to explain how the assessment of these carbon emissions should be approached and presented. A WLC assessment template has also been produced which applicants will be expected to use.
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Institute of Structural Engineers (IStructE)
The Institute has recently published How to calculate embodied carbon, a set of embodied carbon calculation principles for the structural engineering community to follow to calculate embodied carbon in the same rigorous way across all designs, which will allow meaningful comparisons to be made between structural schemes, developing the understanding of embodied carbon as well as how the industry can most effectively reach net zero carbon.
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The Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) Database
The ICE database is an embodied carbon database for building materials which is available for free from Circular Ecology. Their founder, Dr Craig Jones, created the ICE database in his former role as a researcher at the University of Bath whilst working for Professor Geoff Hammond, at the Sustainable Energy Research Team (SERT). The ICE database original contained embodied energy and embodied carbon factors. However, since 2019 embodied energy factors are no longer included. The major data source for the ICE v.3 database is now EN 15804 Environmental Product Declarations (EPD).
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London Energy Transformation Network (LETI)
LETI is a network of over 1000 built environment professionals that are working together to put London on the path to a zero carbon future. The voluntary group is made up of developers, engineers, housing associations, architects, planners, academics, sustainability professionals, contractors and facilities managers. LETI has provided an Embodied Carbon Primer for those interested in exploring embodied carbon in more detail and to support project teams to design buildings that deliver ambitious embodied carbon reduction.
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materialsCAN www.materialsCAN.org
MaterialsCAN includes members of the global building industry that are ready to act on the smart prioritization of embodied carbon in building materials.
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RIBA
In June 2019, the RIBA joined the global declaration of an environmental and climate emergency. The RIBA Sustainability Outcomes guide complements the RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Sustainability Strategy and the RIBA Plan for Use Guide. It provides targets with a timeline to delivery by 2030 for new and refurbished buildings as part of the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge, and an absolute backstop of 2050 for most existing buildings. These include:
· Reducing operational energy demand and carbon by at least 75%, before offsetting
· Reducing embodied carbon by 50-70% before offsite renewables offsetting
RIBA Whole Life Carbon Guidance introduces architects to carbon assessment in the built environment and its application through the RIBA work stages. It makes the case for architects’ role in reducing carbon emissions to mitigate climate change, explains the key concepts of embodied and whole life carbon and recommends the use of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) methodology for undertaking detailed carbon assessments.
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RICS
In November 2017, RICS published “Whole life carbon assessment for the built environment” – a Professional Statement (the highest form of RICS guidance, both mandatory and regulated by the RICS). It is the recommended methodology for undertaking carbon assessments, brings increased consistency to reporting, aligns with BS EN 15978 (though only measuring global warming potential, not the full range of EN 15978 indicators) and provides a reporting structure and practical guidance for calculating lifetime embodied and operational carbon emissions. It can be applied to all types of built assets, including buildings and infrastructure and covers new and existing assets including refurbishment, retrofit and fit-out projects.
RICS Building Carbon Database. Use the RICS database to explore embodied carbon calculations for buildings at each project stage. Register your completed carbon calculations and help build a detailed comparative dataset that will aid building design benchmarking.
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Targeting Zero
Simon Sturgis provides links to his many articles and publications on embodied carbon, including his book, Targeting Zero: embodied and whole life carbon explained. https://www.targetingzero.co.uk/publications.html
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UK Green Building Council
The UK Green Building Council has produced several guidance documents which cover embodied carbon.
Embodied Carbon: Developing a Client Brief and an Example Embodied Carbon Brief provide practical guidance to enable built environment clients to begin requesting embodied carbon measurements and how to act on the results.
UKGBC: Tackling Embodied Carbon in Buildings is designed for clients and developers who want to begin to consider and to reduce the embodied carbon impacts of their developments.
Practical How-To Guide: Measuring embodied carbon on a project: UKGBC partnered with BRE to provide a short guidance note on how to get started measuring embodied carbon on a project.
Net Zero Carbon Buildings: A Framework Definition: UKGBC has developed a framework definition for net zero carbon buildings to provide the industry with clarity on how to achieve net zero in both construction and operation (in-use energy consumption), whilst beginning to provide direction for addressing whole life carbon in the industry.
In July 2019, UKGBC published a ‘Guide to Scope 3 Reporting in Commercial Real Estate’ to support commercial real estate companies with reporting their complete carbon footprint, including value chain (scope 3) emissions. The guide is intended to improve the overall understanding of value chain emissions and provide consistent approaches to reporting activities specific to commercial real estate.
They have recently published Building the case for Net Zero which provides the findings of a feasibility study that shines a light on the real-world implications for achieving new net zero buildings. The study looked at two real-life buildings at design stage, one residential block and one office building. The team considered the base designs and produced two further design iterations for each, one ‘intermediate’ scenario, looking to meet 2025 net zero performance targets and one ‘stretch’ scenario with 2030 targets in mind. The targets used were drawn from work undertaken by RIBA, LETI and UKGBC, covering embodied and operational carbon.
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World Green Building Council
The World Green Building Council’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment invites developers, landlords, occupiers and regional authorities to commit to all buildings in their direct control achieving net zero carbon for operational energy by 2030. They call on UK business to sign up to the Commitment and use this framework to achieve net zero carbon for operational energy, and to go even further by reducing embodied impacts from construction. It’s pioneering report, Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront: Coordinated action for the building and construction sector to tackle embodied carbon, demands radical cross-sector coordination to revolutionise the buildings and construction sector towards a net zero future, and tackle embodied carbon emissions.
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The Use Less Group http://www.uselessgroup.org/
The Use Less Group is based in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. The group is pursuing world leading research into the sustainable use of materials, energy and resources, including the book, Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open.
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WRAP
Wrap no longer works in the built environment sector, but has provided a number of useful documents on embodied carbon – some links are provided below. Other documents are now available through CIRIA (see above).
Cutting embodied carbon in construction projects
The Business Case for Managing and Reducing Embodied Carbon in Building Projects
©2022 by Whole Life Carbon Network.