What’s stopping us from measuring embodied carbon?

So, you’ve just finished construction on an office refurbishment project and you’re feeling pretty pleased with how it’s gone. The client is happy, the building looks great, and you managed to use some low carbon alternatives. But is it actually as low carbon as you think? How can you know for sure?

Carbon counting and embodied carbon assessments are increasingly being applied to quantify the materials used in construction, but how accurate do we need to be and what should we be including?

At Webb Yates we have a relatively simple carbon counting spreadsheet that we ask our engineers to use on every project – even those we know will perform badly. The Institution of Structural Engineers has a very similar tool available for anyone to download for free on itswebsite.

But this is just the structural part of the picture; we then need to consider the internal and external walls, the finishes and the services, and compare that to the new floor area we’ve created. The calculated values can then be compared with targets set by the RIBA. Or LETI. Or the UK Green Building Council … and that is part of the problem.

Does it really matter which targets you use? As long as you’re assessing embodied carbon and trying to reduce it, then you’re heading in the right direction and can start to compare similar projects. Plus, you’re still going to get a pretty good idea whether the concrete frame your engineer specified has completely annihilated the gains from your triple-glazed windows.

我们都很熟悉，并将有助于风险登记册——气候紧急情况不是目前最大的风险吗?

How much detail should we be looking at? If we can’t get the materials that we need in the UK and we have to import them, how do we take that into account? How do we, as engineers and architects, even find out where the materials have come from?

隐含碳评估需要项目中的每个人都感兴趣并为之做出贡献。在碳排放方面实现最大节约的项目是那些承包商将其置于其议程的首要位置的项目——在这些项目中，承包商愿意坚持使用特定的产品，因为它知道具体的碳是重要的，在这些项目中，它将负责地采购材料并修改其流程——例如改变其车辆使用的燃料以减少排放。

What’s stopping us? Why aren’t we assessing embodied carbon, as a whole team, on every project? We’re all familiar with a host of other assessments that we do as standard: Breeam, energy assessments, flood risk assessments and so on. Can’t we add embodied carbon to that list?

A group of professionals from across the industry have come together to try and make that happen with Part Z – a proposed amendment to the Building Regulations that would make assessing and reducing embodied carbon and whole-life carbon a legal requirement. The short-term targets are relatively limited but the proposals suggest that these should become more ambitious as people become more familiar with the process.

Assessing and reducing carbon needs to have a collective approach and collective support throughout the industry. We’re all familiar with and would contribute to a risk register – isn’t the climate emergency currently the biggest risk of all?

The main aim of the discussions that took place at COP26 was to limit the increase in global temperature, and in order to do this we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Taking into account operational emissions, the building industry accounts for 38% of total global energy-related CO₂emissions, so we have a huge part to play in trying to meet those targets.

如果我们能共同努力，以一种更全面的方式来考虑建筑，那么我们没有理由不能减少每座建筑的隐含碳。但我们的出发点是知道我们的建筑中有多少隐含的碳——如果我们甚至不评估它，我们怎么知道我们是否在设法减少它?