Mechanical, electrical, plumbing and tenant improvements over the building lifetime: Estimating material quantities and embodied carbon for climate change mitigation
Featured Research | Richard O Hegarty
We talk a lot about the embodied impacts of concrete, about steel and about timber. We look at ways to reduce the amount of carbon we need to produce them, or instead we try to reduce the amount we use altogether. But is there another elephant in the room (literally in the room!)?
A paper published by Dr. Barbara Rodriguez and colleagues found that, when accounted for, the interior services, furnishings and partitions embody approximately the same amount of carbon as the rest of the structure. This is due to the fact that the interior of a building needs to be replaced more frequently than the structure itself, each time accumulating more and more carbon.
It is difficult to know if this means we need products to last longer (perhaps the products we use now wont serve us in the future) but it certainly means we need to be aware of more than just the structural components of a building.
