CIRCULAR DISRUPTION FORUM: Everyone wants to know what the embodied carbon is in their building materials. But how? The optics and measures are a mess. It’s why Matrak’s founders were frustrated and why they came up with a software app that tracks materials customers buy in China, “end to end.”
According to Shane Hodgkins, co-founder and chief executive of the company, the app allows Australian procurers to see the live production, quality and carbon statistics of materials as they are developed.
It’s also helped many become more confident in building relationships with suppliers of new low carbon materials.
“The vast majority of construction materials are manufactured [in China] – particularly for critical-path, high-carbon products like aluminium facades,” Hodgkins says.
Spurring interest from Australia has been the Chinese government’s adoption of the “six zero” policy for building materials: zero purchased electricity, zero fossil fuels, zero primary resources, zero carbon emissions, zero waste, and zero staff via robotics.
“In 2021, they set a target to cap carbon emissions for building materials nationally, hitting peak carbon for concrete in 2023, and peak carbon for overall building materials this year (2025),” Hodgkins says.
“So, from here on, it’s a steady decrease, which is extremely exciting!”
Committing to delivering those targets is the China Building Materials Federation, a peak body representing 1500 companies and suppliers of building materials in China.
Critically, the federation is a partner in the app that Hodgkins’s company developed. Some members of the federation have also built demonstration factories that can operate at scale and meet all six of the requirements in the policy, providing blueprints for how other members can decarbonise.
“As the organisation managing this industry, and with their key focus on decarbonisation, CBMF has been a fantastic and natural partner to help our goal of tracking the production and carbon of materials coming to Australia,” Hodgkins says.
“Construction or the built environment is reportedly responsible for 37-42 per cent of global carbon emissions, with building materials/embodied carbon making up 15 per cent of global emissions. So, carbon reductions here (in China) are a big deal.”
China’s domestic construction market has slowed since the collapse of Evergrande, but this “encourages domestic producers to target the export market.”
“It means that a lot of lower-carbon products that weren’t available outside China are becoming more available at better prices. Hodgkin’s company and the federation, in August, held a China-Australia low-carbon building materials forum in Brisbane, where a high-level delegation of China’s green building leaders met Australian procurers.
Attendees from Australia included Lendlease, John Holland, SK Construction, Laing O’Rourke, BG&E and Asentis. From China, there were Conch, Alutile, Jomoo, Sobute New Materials, and the Heilongjiang Province Building Materials Industry Association.
According to Hodgkins, some of the more exciting new low-carbon materials featured at the event include Conch’s low-carbon cement, photovoltaic facades and prefab buildings, Alutile’s low-carbon aluminium facades, and Jomoo’s “smart factories” producing low-carbon bathrooms. He adds that the federation is offering to “matchmake” for Australian importers to the right low carbon producers.
Shane Hodgkin will share more insights at The Fifth Estate’s Circular Disruption event on 12 November at the Greenhouse in Sydney. Get tickets here.