Facing Embodied Carbon with Responsible Specification
ForestOne Representative Darryl Ball Styling Zephyr + Stone
The Footprint Company develops tools and data to help climate-active businesses deliver net zero carbon projects. Here, The Footprint Company founder Dr Caroline Noller offers three key pathways architects, designers and specifiers have in their control to effect change on a meaningful level.
The Scale of the Problem
The construction of buildings makes up to 40 per cent of annual global carbon emissions 1 . After decades of mes- saging that has focused on energy efficiency and convert- ing to electric cars, this figure surprises many people. But the energy that goes into manufacturing and transporting products like concrete, steel, plaster and ceramic tiles is enormous. A principal reason that construction makes up such a large proportion of emissions is our desire for new built infrastructure, including internal space design. While something like a road may have a practical design life of 40 years or more, our interior spaces cycle through many more refits than a building overall. Retail and office spaces have a high turnover of refits owing to their lease lengths – five-to-10 years – and the need to keep pace to meet changing customer trends. The upfront carbon intensity of a typical A-grade office fitout in Australia is about 1,700kg CO 2 -e/m 2 NFA, excluding make-good. A non-food retail tenancy is about 800kg CO 2 -e/m 2 GFA, excluding services. Of these figures, about 36–40 per cent is associated with floors,
walls, built-in joinery and furniture, including work stations, benches, lockers, etc 2 . ‘Upfront’ in this context incorpo- rates A1–A5 cradle to doors open. The difference between an 'average' business- as-usual upfront carbon performance, and one that is Paris 1.5C consistent – that is, one that has applied circular economy design principles to maximum extent – is gen- erally 40 per cent. Circular economy principles include adapting and repurposing, reducing or dematerialising through design efficiency or alternative design, recycling or recycled content materials and low- or no-carbon footprint materials. Beyond the obvious opportunity to design all fit-outs to be effectively repurposed with little effort, I encour- age readers to consider other strategies and the scale of reduction you can personally direct. Three of the key pathways architects, designers and specifiers have in their control to effect change are dematerialising through alternative design and recycling, within the context of recycled content of materials.
In the Hettich showroom, EGGER’s Eurodekor® Tobacco Pacific Walnut adds elegant warmth to joinery, complemented by GreenTec Laminate Flooring in Chromix Silver.
The Responsible Specifier
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