CARBON TRIGGERS: The conversation around embodied carbon and demolishing old buildings got more interesting, more complex and more immediate as we delved into the briefings.
Thing is that now we know how to tackle operational emissions (more or less and who would have thunk it only a few years ago?) the industry is turning its creative and exciting collective brains to embodied carbon.
There are so many issues to consider – and most of them surprising.
There’s demolition – sometimes it’s safer, and it can cost more embodied carbon to keep a building up than knock it down and start again. More costly too – but we knew that.
Then there’s infrastructure. According to Jorge Chapa, chief impact officer at the Green Building Council of Australia, there’s movement in infrastructure too.
“We tend to think of the infrastructure sector as like rails and bridges, right? But Infrastructure NSW deals with a lot of other things like schools and hospitals.
“When the infrastructure bodies say, ‘hey we care about embodied carbon’, it turns out a lot of people have to care about embodied carbon.”
That’s because the sector extends to sewerage, water and now, data centres, as Toby Kent, chief executive of the Infrastructure Sustainability Council told us in a podcast we just recorded, and which will be processed soon.
Even though the percentage of infrastructure that is ISC rated is relatively small, Kent says, there’s a rising awareness and propensity to measure it across the field.
The other people who will be fascinating to hear from include Filomena Beshara from Freecity. In a recent interview she gave us a glimpse into the thinking behind closed doors of how developers and builders ponder sustainability, and Michael Mihailou of RBL, who revealed an entire new world of how to cost things – and wow, it’s complex… more on both of those soon.
Book your tickets now though. We did a site visit on Monday, and seating is limited.
Big thanks to our sponsors, Hassell.
