Embodied emissions – knowledge building for industry

A climate emergency has been declared and government, policymakers, industries, researchers and architects have tremendous potential to shift the entire industry towards a (net) zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-built environment. In particular, they all play a different but equally important role in the early design phase when there is the greatest opportunity to make design decisions that can directly lead to buildings that reduce their overall GHG emissions towards zero within their life cycle. This chapter is specifically aimed at the role of building designers. Buildings account for 40% of total GHG emissions and are one of the main contributors to the climate crisis. Recent results show that as net zero emission buildings become more highly efficient, the contribution from EEG (embodied energy and greenhouse gases) increases, thus underlying its growing importance. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to assess embodied carbon and to provide early phase feedback in order to compare the environmental impact of different material, design and construction choices in buildings. However, it is still a relatively new method, and many designers often find it difficult to interpret the results in order to understand how a particular material, component and/or design proposal contributes to the overall GHG emissions in the built environment. This lack of fundamental knowledge and understanding presents a significant barrier to industry uptake and decarbonisation of the built environment. This chapter reports results from the International Energy Agency (IEA) EBC Annex 57 (subtask 4) using data from 80 international case studies, which were collected and systematically analysed alongside supporting data from the literature. The research findings are communicated through simplified diagrams and concise text presented in tabular form where possible, in order to support designers and other non-expert decision makers in the early stage design process. The results presented in this chapter offer a simple and easy to understand visual communication to help develop industry knowledge of net zero and embodied carbon, to help improve participation from key decision makers and more easily integrate science-based knowledge on embodied carbon in industry and in the mainstream.