20 JULY 2022
THE CARBON EFFICIENCY EXPERT’S VIEW
GILBERT LENNOX-KING, CO FOUNDER AND CEO OF
CONSTRUCTION CARBON
For many years there has
been a focus on operational
carbon emissions. While this
is good and admirable there
is a big blind spot that is not
being accounted for.
It is easy to pick the
things that are convenient
to believe. I for one, have
spent most of my working
career working in energy
e iciency for buildings. Of
course, it is important to
reduce operational emissions,
but more recently when I started digging into the facts in
more detail it became clear to me that the industry has huge,
embodied carbon emissions that must be accounted for in any
property Net Zero strategy.
Simply, the stu that makes up a building makes up most of
a building’s emissions over it’s lifecycle. This makes Net Zero
emissions commitments that ignore these emissions hollow.
And yet, we see this. How many developers are tracking
embodied carbon emissions across their portfolios in
development and in use?
Particularly for facilities managers and asset managers,
how many developers are tracking the emissions for the stu
involved with fit outs? Carpet, raised floor systems, ceiling tiles,
HVAC systems, portioning walls, all the things that regularly
get ripped out and replaced. Is this another situation where we
ignore it because it is not seen as completely the landlord or
the occupier’s problems? (it’s both).
The trouble is, the problem is too big to ignore. As can be
seen in pie charts from the
RICS professional statement
on how to calculate whole
life emissions, whole life
embodied carbon emissions
make up the majority of a
building’s lifecycle emissions.
As the charts suggest, with
o ices and warehouses, where
embodied in use emissions may make
up 30 per cent of an asset’s whole lifecycle
emissions, how can these be ignored?
Without doubt, the growing increase of net zero
commitments has resulted in confusion in the market. This
prompted the Whole Life Carbon Network (WLCN) to publish
their net zero carbon definitions document. This is being
updated by the Net Zero Carbon Buildings working group, but
right now is the best we have. This sets out several important
definitions.
What we should all be aiming for is net zero (Whole Life)
Carbon. Whilst there are increasing and laudable net zero
commitments, they are o en incomplete and leave out the
tricky bits for many asset managers and developers. According
to the WLCN: “A 'Net Zero (Whole Life) Carbon’ Asset is one
where the sum total of all asset related GHG emissions, both
operational and embodied, over an asset’s life cycle (Modules
A1-A5, B1-B7 (plus B8 and B9 for Infrastructure only), C1-C4)
are minimised, meet local carbon, energy and water targets,
and with residual ‘o sets’, equals zero.”
Of particular relevance to Facilities Managers is the in-use
part of this definition.
Yes, most of the focus has been on the operational emissions,
but with an increased scrutiny and recognition that the
ultimate goal is net zero whole life carbon, this is something
that cannot any longer be ignored.
THE DIGITAL POWER EXPERT’S VIEW
KASIM MOHAMMED, VP DIGITAL ENERGY AT SCHNEIDER
ELECTRIC
Buildings have the power to bring about better - using
technologies and materials that deliver enhanced usability -
safety, security, and sustainability. Creating a net zero building
ecosystem requires us to take a two-pronged approach. Firstly,
ambitious pragmatism in mitigating the problems of the
existing building stock. Secondly, turning aspirational futuregazing
into immediate action for new buildings.
The International Energy Agency tells us that 50 per cent of
the world’s current buildings will still be in use in 2050 - many
have lifetimes of a century or more. Retrofitting existing
buildings with net-zero technologies must become standard
right now. At its most basic, this means moving from fossil-
FM CLINIC
Approximately 70 per
cent of the UK’s nonresidential
building stock
was constructed before
the year 2000. According
to the Green Building
Council, if the UK’s 2050 net
zero targets are to be met,
improved energy e iciency and
reductions in embodied carbon
will be needed, requiring much of the
sector to undergo some form of retrofit
by 2050. What more can the built environment do to
help meet this challenge?
Gilber t Lennox-King
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