Star rating tools, such as NABERS and Green Star, have been instrumental in driving Australia’s world-leading green building movement. Now there’s a new kid on the block – a star rating scheme for embodied carbon.
Much like the NABERS 6-star rating system for operational carbon intensity, the new star rating system by The Footprint Company measures the embodied carbon intensity of whole buildings and specifies a star performance level.
The creation of the tool has been no easy feat according to the company’s chief executive officer Dr Caroline Noller. It’s taken until now to gather enough robust data and knowledge from experts around the world to have confidence in the “game-changing” star rating tool.
She expects the tool to accelerate the industry’s engagement with the embodied carbon issue.
The global building industry has traditionally focused on operational carbon emissions but is now waking up to the embodied carbon problem (the amount of greenhouse gas released in the production of building materials).
Noller says that as much as half a new building’s life cycle emissions are locked in at the start of the design, long before Green Star starts its assessments.
Critically, the tool will provide clear and measurable benchmarks for “climate responsible” properties.
“Everyone understands star ratings so well,” she says.
These types of tools take the guess work out of decision making for investors, such as most major industry super funds, that have made commitments to responsible investments.
Noller says Australia has led the way on tackling operational emissions in the built environment but lags behind countries such as the UK when it comes to dealing with embodied carbon. With tools to make better calculations, she hopes Australia can catch up and become a leader in “Paris-complaint buildings”.
How it works
Much like NABERS, 3.5 stars represents the current standard and every star increase represents a 20 per cent reduction in embodied carbon intensity. To be Paris compliant, a building design needs 5 stars.
To rate a building, designers use the company’s online calculator or specify out to the market for a consultant to provide a whole building carbon footprint.
Embodied carbon materials guide book
The new rating tool has been launched as part of the 2020 edition of The GreenBook, which Noller describes as a “relatively affordable guide to building Paris-compliant buildings.”
Noller says the first edition, published last year, broke new ground by visually presenting the carbon footprint of different materials.
The guide is pitched at designers, who are on the front line of building material decisions. Noller says the guide makes it easy for a designer to decide between a carpet or a tile, based on the carbon footprint of each.
Users include the big architecture firms – especially those that have declared a climate emergency – and the major universities.
I am highly concerned with the current level of LCAs out there, as they all seem to rely on data that starts with fossil fuel use during extraction, rather than changes to ecosystems. For instance, the latest study around tropical forest carbon suggests that degradation (read: logging) has been underestimated by more than 600%. And another study, done right in Australia, shows that the accounting of carbon in managed temperate forests has been all wrong. So, the latest promotion of wood as carbon neutral is simply false.
One could say similar things about aluminum (think: big dams flooding massive amounts of forests) and steel (think: massive clearing of forests in Brazil for charcoal to process iron), where extraction and production impacts, including those leading to large-scale emissions, are not included.
For those seeking truly sustainable woods and alternatives to wood, consider contacting Earthbilt.
Please keep AMPAN informed.
A worthy addition to the array of built environment performance measures out there no doubt, a selection of which is presented in https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=7098b23a-6309-4d98-98b9-b1db2d5cc2e5 (authored by myself). However it is lamentable that, by and large, as we approach the third decade of the 21st century, the embodied inaccessibility of the built environment generated by both legislative frameworks and procurement, planning, design, and delivery decisions is still not considered.
Mary Ann Jackson, Access Consultant, Planner, Architect