Introduction

In 2010 the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) published ‘Redefining Zero’,¹ which explored moving on from a purely operational energy assessment of buildings towards a ‘whole life’ approach to carbon assessment. In particular, this paper highlighted the fact that carbon emissions from making, maintaining and repairing buildings constitute a significant proportion of a building’s lifetime emissions.

This book, Targeting Zero, follows on from Redefining Zero with the aim of explaining a practical approach to carbon emissions reduction in the built environment. It is focused around the work and experience of the consultancy Sturgis Carbon Profiling LLP (SCP). SCP has been working on material-related carbon emissions analysis since 2007. SCP’s work has been wide-ranging in terms of project types – from new-build owner/occupier offices to Georgian residential retrofit – and in terms of scale: from construction projects with a value of more than £800m down to the carbon footprint of coffee. This book shares our experience in this increasingly important area.

Targeting Zero is written around a selection of practical case studies, all of which examine ways to reduce embodied and whole life carbon emissions. It is worth noting that we are still learning how best to assess and deliver resource-efficient low carbon outcomes.

The title of this book highlights the fact that while zero emissions may be the aim, as a society we have some considerable distance to go before a truly zero carbon building can be achieved. It is the author’s view that the current use of the words ‘zero carbon’, which refers to operational emissions only, is incorrect and misleading as there are very few buildings (generally basic, primitive or simple dwellings) that make no carbon impact on the environment. For today’s society, with its complex construction methodologies, a truly zero carbon building is simply not possible, and offsetting only masks the issue. However, that does not mean it should not remain a utopian aspiration: one that we target, even if unattainable.

A principal aim of this book is to show from practical experience how to reduce carbon footprint through the construction and use of buildings. This means reducing both the use of fossil fuels and the creation of greenhouse gases. Reducing fossil fuel use started when the 1970s oil crisis brought a stop to cheap energy. Oil became an economic weapon, and the stage was set for today’s energy-related legislation. There were a series of energy crises between 1967 and 1979, caused by problems in the Middle East, but the most significant began as a result of Arab oil producers imposing an embargo in 1973.

Now, however, the emphasis has shifted as climate change and resource depletion have become increasingly important. These are identified by the Ministry of Defence as two of the five strategic challenges facing the UK. The other three are inequality, population growth and the shift of power from west to east.⁴ The UK’s low carbon transition plan⁵ makes it a legal requirement for the UK to achieve an 80% reduction of emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. For the built environment industry, this cannot be achieved purely by encouraging reduced energy use in buildings. Achieving material-related carbon emissions reductions, and improving the efficiency with which materials are used, is of vital importance. The Carbon Crunch by Dieter Helm⁶ notes that a prime reason for the UK’s recent emissions reductions is simply that manufacturing has been outsourced to other countries. To achieve real change, it is essential that we reduce our demand for high carbon products.

The built environment in all its forms is essential for the survival of humanity. Paradoxically, the decisions we take over how we make and use this environment are starting to contribute to our destruction, principally through climate change and depletion of resources. Those in the built environment industry have a particular opportunity and, indeed, responsibility to evolve ways of reducing environmental damage resulting from the construction and use of buildings.

The carbon emissions impacts of constructing and maintaining buildings over their lifetimes are increasingly significant due to the success of the Building Regulations and BREEAM in reducing operational energy usage. In most new building types, lifetime embodied carbon emissions can now exceed the regulated operational emissions from day-to-day energy use. Material-related or ‘embodied’ carbon emissions are therefore crucial in making further progress (see Chapter 1).

Through better-informed design choices, architects and designers can directly reduce many of these emissions, and can also help to change the thinking and culture around the use of buildings and structures. Reducing embodied carbon emissions, and the associated resource efficiency involved, will not only profoundly change the way buildings are designed but will also have further implications for architecture and the environment in which it exists.

Huge strides have been made in operational energy reduction, to the point where buildings today use considerably less energy than even 20 years ago. Further such reductions remain important to overall carbon emissions reduction, but they are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve cheaply and in quantity. The problem with current legislation is that it encourages actions to reduce operational carbon emissions without regard for the embodied carbon consequences. An example would be disregarding the carbon emissions cost of covering a building in louvres in favour of the carbon emissions benefit of reduced heating loads. Taking a holistic or a whole life view of carbon emissions is critical to optimising carbon emissions reduction in the built environment.

Taking a more holistic approach to low carbon design will enable architects and structural engineers to play an increasingly key role in determining the whole life carbon footprint of the buildings they design. It will shift the responsibility for carbon emissions reduction from the services engineer to the architect. An important part of this is life cycle analysis (LCA). LCAs are discussed in Chapter 6 (see also ISOs 14040 and 14044)⁷ but, in summary, an LCA examines, at the design stage, a building’s anticipated fabric and energy performance over its projected lifespan. This means that, to achieve low carbon outcomes, building designers need to think long-term from the outset.

The work of all practitioners and consultants in the field of carbon emissions reduction is in accordance with the European Standard CEN TC 350,⁸ incorporated into the British Standard BS EN 15978:2011⁹ (and including BS EN 15804).¹⁰ It is worth noting at the outset that, while this is a sensible starting point, it is proving difficult to implement with consistency.

Practical experience of BS EN 15978 has identified several problems with respect to carbon analysis and reporting:

• Different consultants implement the standard in different ways, giving rise to divergent assessments of the same building types.
• There are a number of issues – such as whether or not to include grid decarbonisation, and to what level – that are not clear from the Standard.
• Different clients require different levels of reporting, and to differing levels of detail, meaning that similar buildings cannot properly be compared.

There is, however, significant and increasing demand for consistent embodied and whole life carbon reporting, not just from client bodies but also local authorities, and anyone who wishes to report under Scope 3 emissions in the fullest possible way.

In 2015, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills funding arm InnovateUK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board) provided funding for an industry-wide team to produce an implementation plan for making BS EN 15978 consistent and understandable in use, and usable and accessible through the RICS certification as a ‘professional statement’.¹¹ The implementation plan also calls for compatibility with BIM and BREEAM 2018. The successful rollout of this project (Implementing Whole Life Carbon in Buildings [IWLCIB]) will provide a benchmark consistent with EU and British Standards to enable consultants, property companies, public bodies, local authorities and software designers to work to a common set of parameters. This project completes in mid-2017.

Assuming RICS and BREEAM definition and integration, embodied and whole life carbon analysis and reporting should become mainstream. This will ensure a reliable template for whole life carbon emissions reduction. This book therefore represents a summary of where things are today.

While this book focuses on carbon emissions, there are other important considerations for designing for better buildings generally, such as wellbeing and health. For example, the International Living Future Institute in Seattle produces the Living Building Challenge,¹² a performance standard that uses a range of more ‘human’ metrics, including the Healthy Materials Red List, which identifies material toxicity. The International WELL Building Institute also uses similar health and wellbeing metrics.

This book is not a textbook in the more severe sense but is aimed at informing architects, engineers, contractors and clients who wish to understand this topic better through the practical experience of one practitioner. I hope you find it useful.

All case studies are by SCP from live projects.