Embodied carbon calculation

RICS guidance on embodied carbon calculation 

The emphasis in Europe recently has been on saving carbon during the life of the building. This leaves out a potentially significant factor: the amount of carbon or its equivalent built into the building as a construction product or material.

For new build properties embodied carbon should become part of the decision making process, to minimise the amount of carbon being incorporated into the building, by considering the transportation and embodied carbon of materials and components.

For properties with the possibility of refurbishment a carbon calculation may show it may make more ‘carbon sense’ to refurbish a building, in the process saving more carbon than demolition and rebuild could have achieved over the life of a project.

This embodied carbon calculation can be complex in practice and probably beyond the scope of the individual surveyor to ascertain; fortunately in the UK level there is an established database which is used by most UK based methodologies to underpin their calculations and CEN.

The European standards body has established a technical committee to require manufacturers to produce this type of information under the forthcoming update to the Construction Products Directive requirements.

RICS has now established a working group to examine this area of work and also link it to the New Rules of Measurement framework being developed by the QS and Construction professional group to ensure consistency and comparability of the data being produced.

The first stage will be to incorporate environmental measures, including embodied carbon, into the NRM framework before tackling the more complex issues of developing a more detailed methodology and database to underpin the calculations.

For more information on embodied carbon

Martin Russell-Croucher
e mrussell-croucher@rics.org

For information on the NRM

Alan Muse
e amuse@rics.org