When you have a carbon budget that you have to stay under to avoid global heating of more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), every pound of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere matters. That’s why we bang on about embodied carbon—also known as upfront carbon or NOW! carbon—that is released during the making of everything from our cars to our computers to our buildings. It is usually ignored and is unregulated in most of the world, including the United Kingdom.
Duncan Baker wants to change all that. The conservative member of parliament from North Norfolk introduced a bill on February 2—“the whole-life carbon emissions of buildings to be reported; to set limits on embodied carbon emissions in the construction of buildings; and for connected purposes.”
He starts his bill (published in the Hansard, the record of Parliament) by explaining operating carbon, the emissions that come from the lighting, power, water, heating, and cooling of buildings, and then praises the “bold steps” the government has taken as part of its “net-zero strategy.”
Baker is a conservative, so he would have to say nice things about their zero-carbon fantasy plan with hydrogen boilers and wood-fired electricity, which is already being challenged by other conservative members, but that is another post. He then explains the embodied carbon that is currently one-third of emissions from the construction industry, and actually makes sense of the use of the word “embodied.”
Actually, for a decent new build with reasonable efficiency, it is likely the embodied carbon is much higher than half. Baker then explains how these embodied emissions are completely unregulated, and with a nice turn of a phrase explains what happens every day when architects put in another jog or cantilever or complication.
He uses a term we first heard from Canadian embodied carbon pioneer Chris Magwood: “We are decarbonising our electricity grid and ending our reliance on fossil fuels, but we are leaving ourselves open to a big concrete and steel elephant in the room.”
Almost everyone, everywhere, is studiously ignoring that elephant in the room, because it is such a daunting problem. But as Baker notes, we have to start somewhere. He ends with a flourish:
While some might argue with his choice of Britain’s greatest construction projects, we can’t disagree with his conclusion: We can’t put off dealing with the issue of embodied carbon any longer.
In the parliamentary system, these kinds of private member’s bills read into an empty house don’t usually go anywhere—the construction industry is powerful and probably votes conservative and the British government has other things on its mind these days—but Baker deserves great credit for putting it out there.
Watch the speech on Parliament TV here and from his website, the background from Baker.
