Glass Express Midlands hosted a roundtable discussion in Birmingham which focused on embodied carbon in the construction industry.
According to Gurprit Bassi, director at Wintech Façade Engineering, and Aneel Kilaire, associate façade consultant at Ramboll UK, the construction industry lacks national guidance on reducing embodied carbon at the planning stage, which outweighs the impact of the operational carbon emissions during the lifetime of a building.
Gurprit and Aneel were also joined by Liz Williams, housing delivery expert at Land Specialist UK, and Arun Photay, managing director of Glass Express Midlands.
Aneel used the term ‘Carbon Binoculars’ to describe someone who doesn’t see the bigger picture, and argued that the current Fabric Energy Efficiency Standard penalises apartments and shifts attention away from other challenges.
He said: “Apartments and detached homes are viewed like-for-like when it comes to meeting U-values. I don’t think it is fair that apartments to have to hit the same targets when their actual energy usage as a total apartment is much less than a detached house.
“We’ve got to focus on other challenges, such as affordability of housing and the construction rate of new housing, together with daylight and health and wellbeing.”
Gurprit added: “I think embodied carbon dominates – or is close to dominating – the lifecycle of a new building. But we don’t have national legislation on measuring or limiting embodied carbon.
“There are regional policies in the UK – the London GLA plan has embodied carbon limits for planning stage, as do a few other local authorities – but I think we need a national policy.”
Aneel continued: “The sceptical part of me says ‘this is just more regulations, and more things for people to do’, and may not make a difference if only newbuilds are affected. It could become another bit of red tape that you have to comply with which makes building more difficult.”
Aneel also said that it was important that any new legislation would require a greater focus on coherence so that different policies work harmoniously with each other.
He added: “If you say ‘reduce your embodied carbon, that may mean ‘don’t use many materials’. But to reduce operational carbon may need more materials – insulation, thermal breaks etc.”
Gurprit argued that many suppliers are already providing the products with low-embodied carbon.
Gurprit explained: “They’re anticipating that embodied carbon is going to be a bigger component of what clients and architects are going to specify. In some areas, because of the GLA and local authority guidance, they’re providing low carbon aluminium and glass, often at little to no extra cost. So, it can be done.
“And not only does this lower embodied carbon, but it creates a more circular economy.”
Aneel said: “We have lower carbon electricity and we have a solid recycling network,” he said. “We need to tread carefully, though, because we don’t want to stifle the market. We need to get house building going again.”
Arun Photay, Glass Express Midlands’ MD, stated: “The manufacture and supply of glass products into the commercial sector doesn’t happen in isolation. It is vital that we create and promote forums like these to raise awareness of key issues so that we can help raise the level of professionalism in the construction industry.
“Thank you to all our guests who gave up their time to share their views and experience.”
