Embodied Carbon in the Building Sector

News Detail

Year:

2022

Country:

Global

Source:

Rambøll

The buildings industry is bound to deliver its fair share to meet EU reduction targets for a climate-neutral continent by 2050: Buildings are evidenced to be responsible for 37% of global energy-related carbon emissions. 10% of total emissions stem from materials and construction.

While metrics and policies exist to target the operational emissions of buildings, much fewer target the 10% of materials and construction-related emissions. Reducing these so called embodied emissions in buildings represents an important opportunity to reduce overall emissions from this industry.

Tackling Embodied Carbon emissions

Funded by the Laudes Foundation, Ramboll – in collaboration with BUILD from Aalborg University and LCA experts affiliated to KU Leuven – assists EU policymakers, industry, and investors tackle embodied carbon by developing a methodology to calculate embodied carbon baselines, carbon budgets and benchmarks in the building industry using LCA data. In the first phase (2021-2022), the methods and concepts will be tested by piloting the baseline and target methods for the five EU countries: Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, and France, and outline a benchmarking framework for the reduction.

Throughout the duration of the project, key stakeholders from the building industry, policymakers on national and EU levels, embodied carbon think tanks and initiatives, as well as financial institutions and building councils from EU member states, are engaged to secure the relevance and feasibility of the methodology and study results.

More info

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