There is nothing stopping us from doing this other than inertia and reluctance among some parties to change from traditional methods of design and construction.
The latter are more voluntary organisations, aiming to demystify some of the complexity around net-zero.They’re trying to push things from a legislation perspective.
Legislation is important, because it leads to clear guidance which industry professionals can use in their day-to-day work.LETI have taken it upon themselves to look at embodied carbon in order to put into a single benchmark what the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), RIBA, CIBSE and others are doing.It’s positive that individual institutions are there to provide very detailed guidance for specific consultants and professionals, but we also need to have an overarching look at where the industry is heading as a whole.. LETI and Design for net zero carbon.
Last year LETI published some of the first documents offering advice on designing for net-zero carbon: The Climate Emergency Design Guide, and The Embodied Carbon Primer.A voluntary organisation made up of hundreds of professionals, LETI aims to share and collate knowledge in order to improve the way buildings are designed.
Bryden Wood’s Head of Sustainability, Helen Hough, has been leading the embodied carbon workstream for the past year.
There are now six sub-workstreams within it.Learn more about.
Industrialised ConstructionThe Benefits of Design to Value: To the Environment.As society’s awareness of its impact on local ecosystems grows to a realisation of the global impacts of climate change and the continued and rapid destruction of habitats, diversity and the planet’s interdependent networks of life, Design to Value offers the opportunity to respond with purpose and adequacy.
Although the green agenda has been around for a couple of decades, the response has been piecemeal, discreet; some would say derisory.The focus on meeting standards or gaining accolades has at best stifled major impact and at worst has lulled the industry and society into the idea that we were making great strides and further action was not necessary..