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If the world is to get a grip on climate change, the built environment needs to step up to the plate. After all, the industry is responsible for around 40% of carbon emissions, according to the World Green Building Council. There is no sustainable future without a sustainable built environment.
The good news is that great strides forward have been taken when it comes to operational carbon. We now know how to make buildings highly energy efficient, even if there are still vast numbers of inefficient buildings that demand attention. To date, however, the industry has made little progress when it comes to embodied carbon - all the emissions associated with the materials used in construction, as well as how the building is constructed.
A new service from the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) hopes to change all that by streamlining the process for measuring embodied carbon from the design stage and teaching quantity surveyors how to measure carbon alongside cost in the calculations. So, how will the initiative work?
James Fiske, CEO of BCIS and chair of the Built Environment Carbon Database steering group, says that surveyors first need to understand the scale of problem. He points out that embodied carbon accounts for 94-98% of tier one contractors’ emissions and that emissions only fell by 4% between 2018 and 2022, despite growing awareness of its significance.
“We have really failed to decarbonise the built environment,” says Fiske. “The reductions we’ve seen are nowhere near the level that we need if we're going to hit the targets that have been set by our government and other governments. Unfortunately, we're in a situation where we're screwing up the planet, to put it bluntly.”
The most effective way to change that would be to conduct a whole life carbon assessment (WLCA) from the outset of all projects. Such an approach would allow QSs to “value engineer” a project from a carbon perspective in much the same way that they already do for cost purposes.
In addition to being good for the planet, conducting a WLCA has other benefits. “There are a number of things that you do during a WLCA that make you think about what you're building and how you're going to maintain it, which isn't always the case,” says Fiske. “We're now seeing that more sustainable buildings are starting to attract higher prices in the market.”
The problem is that there aren’t currently that many incentives for clients to require WLCAs. “Part of that is driven by the lack of a government mandate,” says Fiske. “Some local authorities have planning requirements that state that you have to submit a WLCA, but the whole thing is very dependent upon a client and a funder at the moment, and we need to do something about that in the industry to really drive the decarbonisation of what we're doing.”
There has been some positive change. According to an RLB survey, the number of clients that are asking for WLCAs on projects increased from 14% in 2023 to 33% in 2024, for instance. However, Fiske has serious doubts about whether all those additional studies are being conducted properly. “We've seen cases where people say they're doing it, but they're not doing it correctly,” he says.
To an extent, that is understandable. As Fiske points out, conducting a WLCA is a very complicated business. “And because it's complicated it’s also quite expensive to undertake those assessments in the current way that we're working,” he says. “It's very time consuming and expensive to do it.”
It also has to be said that the system as it stands is open to abuse. “At the moment, carbon assessments can be carried out by anyone,” says Fiske. “There's nothing to stop anyone from producing carbon assessments today. It's deeply worrying and frankly it really is a bit of a Wild West out there.”
Ultimately, investing in people who have the skills to conduct a thorough WLCA properly doesn’t just pay off when it comes to carbon. According to Fiske, it is critical that clients fully understand the benefits. “When they're done correctly, WLCAs will obviously feed into a board’s ESG [environmental, social and governance] reporting, which is becoming more and more important for a number of organisations,” he says.
Of course, there has been a push back against the ESG agenda recently, not least in the US with an increase in criticism of so-called “woke capitalism”, but Fiske isn’t overly concerned. “I think there's a lot of green washing, but I'm still seeing lots of evidence of projects being funded on their green credentials,” he says. “I think ESG reporting is going to continue. I don't see that disappearing, certainly in the UK at least.”
That being the case, demand for WLCAs from the private sector is likely to continue to grow. Local planning authorities are also increasingly requiring assessments, spurred on by recent changes to the planning system, as are infrastructure regulators. However, the lack of consistency and skills are still serious concerns.
At the moment, carbon assessments can be carried out by anyone. It's deeply worrying and frankly it really is a bit of a Wild West out there. James Fiske, CEO, Building Cost Information Service
“Last year, I counted about 60-odd carbon calculators out there,” says Fiske. “The problem is they all work on different boundaries, different scopes, and they all give completely different numbers, which just isn't helpful at all. What that means is that if a client or a funder is engaging consultants to conduct WLCAs on their buildings, they can't ever compare them because the numbers are all different.”
Fortunately, the situation is changing. Effective from July 2024, RICS has published the second edition of its whole life carbon assessment for the built environment professional standard, which standardises the methodology.
“The good news is that the industry has a standard and a methodology,” says Fiske. “The bad news is it's complicated and time consuming to deliver and not enough people know how to use it. I don't think everybody knows that the standard is there and certainly not everybody knows how to use it. RICS has produced a training course, which it has only just started to roll out, and I think if we wait for the industry to go through that, we'll still be talking about this in 2030.”
As a result, BCIS wants to encourage as many QSs as possible to acquire the tools and skills they need in order to conduct WLCAs to the approved standard. To that end, it has just launched a new service to raise awareness and is offering BCIS’s trusted cost and carbon data and expertise at a deep discount.
“We're working with RICS on our promotion because we obviously want to encourage QSs to upskill and take on this role,” says Fiske. “So, we're offering RICS members access to Life Cycle Evaluator, which enables QSs to measure and report on upfront and whole life costs and carbon at the same time, at a ridiculously discounted rate. It costs from just £50 for three months’ access, along with some training that we've also developed to encourage QSs to start to have the discussions with the clients and the funders and start to build up capability.”
Fiske doesn’t pretend that the initiative will be a silver bullet that will get all QSs up to speed instantly. But it is surely a great leap forward at a time when the impact of climate change feels all the more threatening with every year that passes.
