This approach fosters collaboration among all stakeholders from the early stages of a project, leading to more cohesive and streamlined construction processes.. 5.
As we’re able to drive better and better performance through energy efficient equipment and passive design techniques, we can actually start reducing our operational carbon right from the early design stages.This decrease in operational carbon will continue over time with things like the decarbonisation of the electricity grid.
However, the result is that embodied carbon in buildings, due to material usage and the amount of carbon which is integral to the building itself, becomes a larger proportion of the overall carbon emitted from the building across its lifespan.As such, embodied carbon is increasingly playing a much bigger role in our day-to-day focus on sustainability as architects and designers..Embodied carbon varies based on the building typology.
For example, in residential architecture, we might see a ratio of one third embodied carbon to two thirds operational carbon across a building’s lifespan.On the other hand, with a building like a data centre, where the operational energy of the building is very high, operational carbon will always be a larger portion of the total, whole-life carbon of the building..
The good news is that our data is improving all the time, and the industry is gaining momentum around the issue of sustainability with respect to embodied carbon.
Within the next couple of years, we’re going to see an amazing increase in knowledge.There is little use in just trying much harder at doing the same things.
We need to pause, reflect on our purpose, try to see different perspectives, different routes forward; bring light to our present.. We need to try different things, do things in different ways, make new connections.. A few weeks ago I was involved in a conversation about pharmaceuticals.Many of the drugs we take are synthesised ultimately from oil or use significant amounts of fossil fuels to produce.
Agricultural, paper and wastewater industries dispose of significant amounts of carbon-based compounds which could be the feedstocks for these drug substances.Creating new connections between industries that work largely independently could have a significant impact on the sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry.