Embodied Energy & Carbon
ENERGY & CO2
Recorded by Sofie Pelsmakers, images by Essi Nisonen
KEY READINGS
Carbon: A Field Manual for Building Designers, Kuiitinen, Organschi & Ruff, John Wiley & Sons
Designing for the climate emergency, a Guide for Architecture Students, Pelsmakers, S., Donovan, E., Hoggard, A., Kozminska, U., RIBA
The Re-Use Atlas: A Designer's Guide Towards the Circular Economy, Baker-Brown, RIBA
Targeting Zero: Embodied and Whole Life Carbon Explained, Sturgis, RIBA
What Colour is your building?, Clark, RIBA
INSPIRATIONAL BUILT EXAMPLES
Mole Architects – Cavendish House, Cambridge, UK
Superuse Studios, Dordtyart, Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Architype Architects, The Enterprise Centre, Norwich, UK
EMBODIED ENERGY & CARBON
Reducing embodied energy and embodied carbon and addressing the wider environmental impacts of construction materials is vital in designing for the climate emergency. Urgent action is required to achieve substantial reductions in embodied carbon, aiming for as much as 97-99%. This can only be achieved by strategies that involve re-using buildings, avoiding their demolition and using reclaimed materials, i.e. part of a circular economy approach, and designing from ‘cradle to cradle’, accounting for the material's entire life cycle, including disassembly and reuse. Buildings that act as material resource banks challenges the linear and ‘cradle to grave’ approach that currently exists in the construction industry.
Other strategies include avoiding concrete and steel and other high embodied-carbon materials; instead use low energy materials, and low-carbon materials that are produced by renewable energy; localise where sensible; use plant-based materials that can be carbon negative and act as a carbon sink (i.e., biogenic materials that absorb more CO2 than they release like timber). Early on in the design process, undertake embodied carbon and life-cycle analysis (LCA) to compare options and help your design decision-making process – there are simple tools you an use. Do not just consider energy and carbon but all other impacts (e.g. biodiversity, water pollution, health and well-being etc.).