Tackling Embodied Carbon - Literature Review by Oliver Baldock

TACKLING EMBODIED CARBON LITERATURE REVIEW OLIVER BALDOCK. JUNE 2019. ARCH7043.

The current situation regarding global emissions On May 1st, 2019 the UK government declared an environment and climate emergency as a way of recognising humanities impact on increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere and it’s impact on rising global temperatures. Although definitive actions to reduce the UK’s impact are yet to be established the Committee on Climate Change recommends that the government aims to end greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This target aligns with the IPCC’s 2018 report stating that by 2030 CO2 emissions need to drop by 45% from 2010, reaching ‘net zero’ by 2050, in order to keep global warming below 1.5oC. Whilst the UK’s power sector has reduced its carbon emissions by 75% since 2012, the remaining six sectors, including those related to construction, have stagnated (CCC, 2019). The report splits the emissions of the built environment, which are summarised in Fig.1 to Fig.5, over two sectors. Buildings, deals with improving the operational carbon emissions of, mainly, residential buildings. Industry, considers the embodied carbon associated with all forms of manufacturing, including construction. To fully understand the opportunities and restrictions surrounding emissions within the construction industry, it needs to be considered as it’s own sector allowing for a full cradle to grave analysis. The manufacturing, transportation and construction of the built environment is intrinsically linked to it’s operation, demolition and disposal (Zhang and Wang, 2016).

The UK’s targets This proposals aligns with the government’s Clean Growth Grand Challenge to deliver better performing buildings by focusing on Digital Techniques, Offsite Manufacturing, and, importantly for this study, Whole Life Asset Performance (HM Government, 2019). Futhermore, Construction 2025 (HM Government, 2013) set out, from 2013, twelve years of budgeted carbon reduction strategies in order to achieve the following aims: 1. a 33% reduction in the cost of construction and the whole-life cost of assets; 2. a 50% reduction in the time taken from inception to completion of new build; 3. a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment*;

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------* This target is compared to a 1990 baseline as set out in the GCB’s Low Carbon Routemap for the Built Environment, which calls for an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Alongside these aims, the UK’s Green Building Council’s latest framework, calls for a focus on ‘Net Zero Carbon’ across the whole life cycle of a building, focusing on two principles. The first is to achieve zero or negative carbon emissions in construction (1.1) and the second is to achieve it within the building’s annual 1

operational emissions (1.2), with a potential third principle, yet defined, that focuses on net zero carbon across the whole life (1.3). To achieve these aims they suggest two solutions: the first is the undertaking and disclosure of a whole life carbon assessment (2.1) and the second is the measurement and offsetting of any embodied carbon at completion (2.2). Measuring embodied CO2 Current challenges for Embodied CO2 calculations: • Lack of cross-industry environmental product declaration (EPD) database • Geographic variation in data collection • Incomplete, unreliable or inaccessible data sources • Life Cycle Stage uncertainty • Data inclusion: Structure vs. All • Lack of benchmarks • Lack of consistency and/or transparency • Lack of knowledge dissemination (De Wolf, Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017) What can improve it? • • •

Inclusion and improvement in current BIM tools An industry wide move towards BIM Level 3 An industry wide move towards Design for Manufacturing & Assembly

Why is it important? Reducing embodied carbon at one life cycle stage does not necessarily reduce the life time carbon emissions of a project. It can shift the burden on to other stages in the buildings life cycle. To understand whether design and other decisions will cause this effect, an analysis of predicted emissions needs to happen at all stages. Often the biggest reductions in a project’s resource use comes through better informed design decisions at earlier stages when a buildings form/orientation/size/ materiality can easily be changed. (Matossian and Delimata, 2019) Incentivising reduction Mandatory disclosure of predicted carbon emissions for proposals would allow for appropriate and carbon taxation, incentivising reduction strategies earlier in the design process. The GLA recommends that any taxation “should not put an unreasonable burden on development and must enable schemes to remain viable” (HM Government, 2018), yet it must also be significant enough to instigate a change. As a case study, Renzo Piano’s Shard totaled 1,370 tonnes of embodied carbon during construction (Jessel, 2012) According to the GLA’s Carbon Offset Price recommendations, the maximum cost to offset a tonne of CO2 is capped at £194 (HM Government, 2018), which equates to £266,000 for the Shard. This equates to 0.06% of the £435m build cost (Keever, 2012). Hardly an adequate incentive to implement carbon saving measures.

A cohesive set of regulations Whilst the current TC350 standards, extensively cover methods of measuring the efficiency of a project’s construction, little guidance is provided in to how and where to report these results. The RICS professional statement on the topic states the inconsistencies in current reporting methods as reason for providing ‘mandatory principles and practical guidance for whole life carbon assessment to be adopted across the industry’ (RICS, 2017). These mandatory principles set out minimum reporting requirements based on the TC350 standards and has so far seen 246 construction firms contribute to RICS new carbon database (RICS, 2019). Numerous bodies are currently pushing for the regulation of embodied carbon. Both Wilmott Dixon & Thomas Lane stated, prior to the scrapping of the Zero Carbon strategy in 2016, that embodied energy would be 100% of the emissions from construction projects. In 2017 the GLA adopted the London Energy Transformation Initiative’s Be Seen policy which promotes data disclosure surrounding energy use. Whilst many certifications (BREEAM, LEED, CEEQUAL, etc) and methodologies (Zero Carbon, Passivhaus, etc) exist to push the reduction of emissions in construction “one of the most difficult issue facing policy makers … is that there is currently no single agreed standard method for assessing the embodied energy of a construction material or product.” (Dixon, 2010)

Design decisions and certifications Whilst a significant amount of research has been undertaken into the causes and impacts of both embodied and operating carbon within the construction industry, little action is currently being taken across the industry to reduce the whole life cycle impact of buildings. Although many bodies and reports provide valid actionable demands to advance this process, it is impossible to quantify their effectiveness. There is currently a significant lack of understanding of how the construction sector can piece together the multitude of available data in order to understand it’s impact on global emissions. Understanding what is needed to raise the design sector up to BIM Level 3, where life cycle assessment is a mandatory part of the design cycle, is key in understanding the incentives and actions best suited to tackling this issue. Word Count: 1098

Fig.1 Gltobal CO2 Emissions by Sector

Fig.2 Annual Global Sector CO2

Global Alliance for Buildings & Construction 2018 Global Status Report

UN Environment 2017 Global Status Report

Other 6%

Building operations 28%

Embodied Carbon 28%

Transportation 23%

Operational Carbon 72%

Building materials & construction 11%

Industry 32%

Fig.3 Embodied Energy for Typical Office Building

Fig.4 Distribution of CO2 emissions of each life cycle phase between 2005-2012

Cole & Kernan, 1996

Zhang et al Research on the life-cycle CO2 emission of China’s construction sector

Site Preparation 6%

Building Demolition 0.1%

Building Operation* 24.4%

Envelope 26%

Services 24%

Waste Disposal 0.1%

Building Construction 1.4%

Building Materials Manufacturing 72.9%

Building Materials Transportation 1.1% Construction 7% Structure 24% Finishes 13% * This study refers to the average annual CO2 emission of the construction industry rather than a study of a single building. Multiplying the operational energy by the assumed 50 year life span of the building would result in the operational energy equating for 94.16% of total CO2 emission.

Fig.5 Cradle to Site Embodied Carbon Values of Common Construction Materials University of Bath Embodied Energy and Carbon in Construction Materials

Brick

Cement

Concrete

Glass

Steel

Timber 0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Embodied carbon: kgC/kg

* This data does not take into account the strength / weight ratio of each material. A thinner, lighter steel beam can carry the same load as a thicker, heavier timber beam. Furthermore, a thinner cross-laminated timber beam can carry the same load as a heavier, traditional timber beam, but requires more energy (and more CO2) to manufacture, so less material may be used, but the embodied carbon may be unaffected/greater.

LITERATURE REVIEW QUANTIFYING CARBON EMISSIONS The importance of embodied energy in carbon footprint assessment. - Alwan, Z. and Jones, P. (2014). 1. The aim of the paper is to highlight the impact that the embodied energy of materials in construction can have on the environment. 2. A current building project with a limited material palette was chosen in order to produce an accurate embodied energy calculation. 3. The results indicated that while the operational energy of the project was of more significant value over the predicted lifetime of the project the embodied energy was significant enough not to ignore. Alterations to the buildings design resulted in a significant reduction in carbon emissions. 4. At the time of writing (2014) the use of a live project and calculating its embodied carbon was an original idea. The paper also suggests an inventory of components with embodied carbon values embedded into BIM

A mixed review of the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for sustainability. - Chong, H et al. (2017). 1. This paper reviews BIM’s current development for sustainability, and how it could be adapted to the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. 2. The research paper uses a five stage review approach (Pawson et al) of relevant literature pertaining to the topics of BIM & Life Cycle Assessment. It reviewed 36 BIM guidelines and 91 academic publications on the topic. 3. The paper discovered a discrepancy between what the guidelines focus on and what the academic papers are interested in. The paper recommends an inclusion of sustainability assessments within new BIM guidelines 4. This paper provides an extensive assessment of other available publications on the topic, indicating what their focus and breadth is.

LCA and BIM: Integrated Assessment and Visualization of Building Elements’ Embodied Impacts for Design Guidance in Early Stages. - Röck, M., Hollberg, A., Habert, G. and Passer, A. (2018).

1. The paper aims to provide a proof-of-concept for a BIM-integrated assessment of the environmental impact of a buildings construction in the early design stages of a projects 2. The proposed approach was test of a conceptual residential BIM model which included the fundamental elements expected as part of the early design approach. The Swiss building element classification scheme for cost estimation was used to create an effective language between LCA and BIM which allows easy exchange of elements as the design grows and increases in Level of Detail. 3. The study concludes that this potential approach to integrating BIM & LCA allows for detailed analysis of how individual elements contribute to a buildings total emissions, and can help provide key visual guidance and awareness of various hotspots throughout the proposal.

4. The use of Dynamo in automating the process appears to be key to making this a seamless transition usable by all of the design team, rather than a specialist few. Integration of Life Cycle Assessment in a BIM Environment. - Antón, L. and Díaz, J. (2014). 1. The paper aims to assess the usefulness of BIM and LCA within the construction industry to show which phases of a project they are most useful, in order to improve the construction industry’s performance. 2. Little first hand research, but various literature is assessed and referenced. It suggests two methods to calculating LCA. The first is directly within BIM, the second is linking the BIM model to environmental databases. 3. The study concludes that an assessment on the entire construction life cycle is more accurate despite it being more complicated, and accuracy appears to be the most important factor. 4. Paper neglects an understanding of the teams using BIM and how to get them involved in the process, ease of access needs to be considered as well as accuracy. Design-Integrated LCA Using Early BIM. - Hollberg, A., Tschetwertak, J., Schneider, S. and Habert, G. (2018). 1. The paper aims to allow for time efficient improvements of a proposals environmental performance at the early stages of a design when many parameters are still unknown. 2. A conceptual design for a neighbourhood is used as a case study, at the point when the proposal is a ‘shoebox’ model. The typical parameters that a designer can change in this sort of model are geometry, materials and HVAC systems, which consist of further sub-parameters. This approach allows each user to determine their own weighting factors, deciding what factors are more important for each design. 3. The report recognises that this form of modelling is simplified, but necessary to begin to move from current post-design evaluations to a design integrated assessment. 4. The discussion around a process integrated into parametric design is useful, and the methodology , although not traditional BIM standards, could potentially be a more accessible solution. Integration of LCA and BIM for Sustainable Construction. - Antón, L. and Díaz, J. (2014). 1. The paper sets out three main fields of discussion, the first is pushing exhaustive analysis of design choices at early stages, the second is pushing new technologies to aid sustainability in construction, the third is the improvement of environmental performance within buildings 2. The paper employs a ‘SWOT’ (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the integration of LCA with BIM in order to achieve these aims. 3. The paper concludes that integration of LCA and BIM allows a more extensive approach to BIm considering the large amounts of data required to be processes. It suggests two methods of integration, the first allows for complete life cycle evaluation and is more comprehensive, the second is a more material orientated 6

approach which allows more choice and is more suitable for early stage design. 4. Useful risk / benefit analysis, but conclusion, research, and testing is limited. Very much a paper based project with little practical advice for integration. Zero-Carbon Buildings? It’s the Wrong Target. - Burrell, E. (2014). 1. This article compares the Zero-Carbon Building target with Passivhaus, suggesting that, when at the time of writing the government had not scrapped this, ZeroCarbon was the wrong target. 2. The research is based on second hand sources, targets and values proposed by Zero-Carbon housing as compared to other sources of information. 3. The article suggests a number of clear reasons why for smaller residential buildings Passivhaus would be a better standard to achieve, as it ensures a low carbon footprint over the lifetime of the building and does not focus on offsetting as a means to reducing that footprint. 4. The Hanover 2012 paper “ Is net Zero the right target for buildings” was acknowledged and worth a read for references etc. 3D views: Sustainability and BIM - Is carbon the Cinderella of BIM? - Knutt, E. (2015). 1. This article notes a discussion between three BIM experts and their understanding and opinion on the role of carbon within BIM Level 2 & 3 2. This is a first hand account of an interview between Ashley Poole-Graham, BIM manager at contractor Speller Metcalfe, who has an MSc in sustainable construction; Owen Cockle, a BIM consultant and senior architect at Pick Everard, and Brian Alborough, associate at Geraghty Taylor Architects. 3. The interview concludes that for carbon to become more integrated into BIM there needs to be a willingness for clients to get involved, and AP-G suggests a more seamless transition between BIM and analysis tools. Interestingly OC suggests an earlier integration of building owners/users to phase in future development of the project into BIM. 4. AP-G suggests that the onus is on software vendors to ensure interoperability between BIM enabled software and analysis tools. An embodied carbon and energy analysis of modern methods of construction in housing: A case study using a life cycle assessment framework. - Monahan, J. and Powell, J. (2011). 1. This study aims to both identify and quantify the embodied energy in the construction of case study house constructed using modern methods of construction, in order to compare the values with traditional methods of construction. This in turn will help to quantify the potential carbon savings from expanding the use of MMC construction. 2. The study is based over two sections, the first looks at literature related to Life Cycle Assessments in construction, the second looks at analysing an energy affordable house construction in Norfolk, UK in 2008. 3. The study calls for an uptake in MMC as well as recognising that a lifetime

approach and understanding of carbon emissions over a buildings life is needed to create a sustainable structure. It also calls for a sustainable construction agenda along the whole supply change, emphasising the importance of a cradle to grave analysis. 4. Look up Carbon connections and Broadland District Council as well as Space 4. The risk of burden shifting from embodied carbon calculation tools for the infrastructure sector - Jackson, D. and Brander, M. (2019) 1. This paper aims to explore the way that different methods of carbon calculators may shift the burden of carbon emission to other stages of construction, and what measures can be used to mitigate this. 2. A two section approach split between literature review and case study analysis is used to explore evidence of burden shifting. For the case study a series of Decisions Cases were made were the effects of a change in design on the embodied emissions were measured. Subsequent counteracting increases in emissions were then measured and estimated later in the life cycle. 3. In one out of three cases, the design decisions taken at earlier stages, which decreased the embodied carbon associated with construction, led to higher operating carbon emissions at later stages, meaning the burden had shifted rather than been reduced. 4. The paper emphasises the importance of whole life cycle assessments within construction.

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