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.
Latest people we interviewed included James Logie, a director with Infrastructure New South Wales. For two years he’s been working with the department on what a lower carbon scenario might look like across the huge range of property types that the department influences – not just roads, bridges and trains but schools, hospitals and houses.
And the work isn’t restricted to the state – there are discussions and collaborations across other government agencies and other jurisdictions.
So this leadership (and we have every indication that it is leadership) looks to be stretching a big way across a large swathe of the industry.
As Jorge Chapa, chief impact officer at the Green Building Council of Australia, told us in an article just published:
“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.”
The other people we interviewed were Filomena Beshara from Freecity, who took us on a quick dive 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.
