The Marks and Spencer retail building in London might be saved from demolition thanks to rising support to retain buildings. But what are other leading countries doing?
The UK government has blocked the demolition of the well-known Marks and Spencer’s flagship Oxford Street store in London in a move that looks to respond to the activist campaigners from within the built environment.
Plans by architects Pilbrow & Partners to demolish and replace the heritage building with a 10-storey office and retail building would have released almost 40,000 tonnes of embodied carbon into the atmosphere, according to the retrofit First movement.
The movement is a campaign by the UK’s Architects’ Journal and historical building campaign group SAVE Britain’s Heritage, calling for priority in retrofitting existing buildings over demolition and rebuilding.
Secretary of State Michael Gove’s decision will overrule the Westminster City Council, which had given planning permission to the project in November 2021 and that of planning inspector David Nicolson, who recommended the demolition to be granted, after a two-week public inquiry in late 2022.
“[I do] not consider that the applicant has demonstrated that refurbishment would not be deliverable or viable, and nor has the applicant satisfied the secretary of state that options for retaining the buildings have been fully explored, or that there is compelling justification for demolition and rebuilding,” Gove wrote in his letter of refusal.
While some of the impacts would be mitigated by purchasing carbon offsets, Gove wrote, the embodied carbon would “impede the UK’s transition to a zero-carbon economy” as well as cause the loss of the heritage Orchard House which houses M&S and potential damage to the surrounding heritage assets such as Marble Arch.
His controversial opinion has already earned the anger of the retailer’s chief executive, Stuart Machin, and UK’s Financial Times, which called the decision “pathetic” and “nonsensical” and branded Gove “anti-business”.
Another campaigning group, the Barbican Quarter Action (BQA) campaign, is also trying to sway the City of London away from approving the demolition of the 1970s Bastion House and the former Museum of London buildings.
The BQA co-chair, Averil Baldwin, believed the decision would echo a “national shift in favour of retaining and repurposing buildings”.
The rest of the world
Concern around carbon emissions of demolition is not new. The Netherlands claims to be the first country to mandate life cycle assessments (LCAs) in 2013, which assesses embodied carbon emissions stemming from the manufacture, installation, upkeep, and demolition of building materials.
This wasn’t enough. The Dutch environmental group Urgenda Foundation and 900 Dutch citizens sued the Dutch government in 2015 –calling for more actions to prevent global climate change. The court ordered the Dutch state to limit greenhouse emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 by 2020.
Sweden followed suit in 2022, enacting the Act on Climate Declarations for New Buildings, which required developers to calculate the embodied carbon emissions for new buildings and report this to the government to receive final building permit approval. The act would increase builders’ awareness and contribute to the United Nation goal of keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius.
France
New regulations in France took it a step further. The RE2020, which started in July of 2022, calls for builders to provide a dynamic LCA that would weigh future emissions against embodied carbon emissions, and for all new public buildings to be constructed from at least 50 per cent wood or other sustainable materials.
Limits for embodied carbon were also rolled out in 2022, with the limit due to be continually reduced in 2025, 2028 and 2031 to pressure the building sector to decarbonise. The country aims for a 50 per cent reduction in embodied carbon emissions of buildings by 2030 and full decarbonisation by 2050.
Denmark
Denmark has also joined the race, committing to a 70 per cent reduction of emissions by 2030 compared to levels in 1990. After launching new regulations asking for voluntary contribution to building sustainability standards in May 2020, the country has set a new mandate, introducing embodied carbon limits into building regulations in 2023.
New sustainability requirements will be phased into the building code, with a threshold limit of 12 kilograms of CO2-eq (carbon dioxide equivalent) a year for buildings bigger than 1000 square metres. This would include all building-related greenhouse gas emissions, including embodied carbon and constructions smaller than 1000 sq m must conduct an LCA.
The limits are expected to be lowered at two-year intervals, with dramatic decreases estimated over the next decade.
Rest of the European Union
With their significant players now addressing embodied carbon and LCAs, the rest of the European Union is projected to follow suit. The European Commission is taking the lead, rolling out a rulebook for guiding investment towards sustainable economic activities. There are three key rules:
- new buildings larger than 5000 sq m must come with assessment of the building’s global warming potential (GWP) at each stage and disclose this to investors and clients
- under the revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), starting in 2027, new buildings larger than 2000 sq m are required to have an LCA conducted with certificates to testify for any carbon storage potential
- EPBD has called for each member state to describe its policies on reducing embodied carbon emissions and uptake of carbon removals and enact national building renovation plans
Researcher Dr Catherine De Wolf told the European Commission that only 1 per cent of materials from a demolition site are currently reused because the market for reused was still not in place.
“If more demand and more actors were involved, we could (reuse) more materials from buildings.”
United States
A study done by Restore Oregon, a not-for-profit organisation aiming to protect the environment, concluded that tearing down a 140 sq m older home and replacing it with a 280 sq m residential building would produce 126 metric tonnes more of embedded carbon compared to renovating a new home.
It believes that “the greenest building is the one that already exists” and claims that the demolition of 823 houses between 2016 and 2020 had released emissions equivalent to 76,480 cars.
The organisation calls on policymakers to acknowledge the environmental impact of sending usable buildings to landfills and provide meaningful incentives for retaining and reusing buildings.
So far, US President Joe Biden has called for an executive order for the US government to achieve net-zero emissions across its operations, named the Federal Sustainability Plan. The plan hopes to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 per cent compared to its 2005 levels and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
This included:
- commitment to net-zero building emissions by 2045
- 100 per cent carbon pollution-free electricity on a net annual basis by 2030
- climate resilient infrastructure and operations
Notably, a future president cannot undo a presidential executive order.
UNEP
According to the UN Environment Programme 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, carbon emissions from building operations have reached an all-time high of 10 gigatonne of carbon dioxide, and embodied carbon materials need to be immediately addressed.
According to UNep:
- materials used in construction, such as concrete, steel and aluminium, represent 9 per cent of overall energy-related CO2 emissions
- globally, approximately 100 billion tonnes of waste are caused by construction, renovation and demolition, with 35 per cent being sent to landfill
- raw and construction materials use is predicted to double by 2060, with steel, concrete and cement already a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions
Needless to say, the buildings and construction sector is not on track to achieve decarbonisation by 2050.
Australia
There are no mandatory regulations for embodied carbon measurement, reporting or reduction, and Australia is currently lagging behind many international peers.
However, many players in the built environment industry are starting to act, with the Green Building Council of Australia clarifying that offsetting demolition works from upfront carbon emission will be included in the assessment guideline of Green Star-rated buildings and the Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance are working hard to transform the market for low embodied carbon materials.