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Home » Industry News » Sustainability News South Africa » Decarbonising the built environment through materials – an Aussie perspective

Decarbonising the built environment through materials – an Aussie perspective

THE following abridged paper, co-written by Global GreenTag International’s David Baggs (CEO & Program Director) and Dr Nana Bortsie-Ayree (Lead Product Assessor and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) specialist) offers the South African building industry some thoughtful new approaches via LCA to bring more decarbonised products and materials into projects and deliver greater examples of climate friendly buildings. 

Working closely with product certification programme developments, which are continuously unfolding at the Global GreenTag International headquarters in Australia, Lizette Swanevelder, CEO of Global GreenTag Africa claims: 

“From a products and materials perspective, Global GreenTag certification is all over the decarbonisation issue. The long-term consequences of greenhouse gas emissions concerns humanity as a whole. We like to cover all areas of product assessment and the process of measuring carbon impacts through LCA processes and sharing this level of information with the industry is critical.” 

David Baggs is a materials specialist and a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects and is well versed in the South African context. Dr Nana Bortsie-Ayree, who is from Ghana, has a background in Life Cycle Management with a doctorate in Management (Strategy and Natural Environment). 

Although written from an Australian context, the steps towards decarbonisation apply equally well here.

The built environment contributes about 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that to reach the 2050 goal of net-zero, the built environment industry will have to decarbonise three times faster over the next 30 years in comparison to the previous 30 years. Yet even this level of change will be insufficient to keep the global increase to 1.5C.

In Australia, it is estimated that reducing embodied carbon in commercial and residential buildings by ten per cent between now and 2050 will lead to an elimination of at least 63 megatonnes of emissions. Recent changes to the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA) Green Star® green buildings rating tool have, for the first time in Australia, focused the industry’s major players on embodied carbon emissions associated with materials This article discusses decarbonisation from the aspect of up-front emissions of materials.

How likely is it that the industry will be able to achieve reducing up-front carbon emissions levels to net-zero? 

This question assumes that material processing and building operations make up a significant chunk – about 95 per cent – of these emissions. For the industry to make even a modest dent in emissions, substantial change and innovation will be needed in what is generally considered a highly risk-averse industry.

Decarbonisation from the material and embodied carbon perspective means taking on unprecedented innovation challenges, as well as changes to processes and supply-chain decision making. How to without unintentionally increasing other chemical pollutants or water contamination or consumption?

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that allows for the estimation of all impacts, including carbon emissions, for building materials beginning with the raw material extraction phase, through manufacturing, packaging, and transport, on to fate of the product at the end of its initial ‘life.’

LCA studies generate data that quantifies impacts across a wide range of indicators, and when used as a carbon hot-spotting tool, support decision-making to incorporate innovative low carbon ingredients or processes. In totality, all these components contribute to what has been previously known as “embodied carbon” and, as indicated, is now described as ‘up-front carbon’ in the GBCA’s Green Star ‘Buildings’ rating tool. 

LCA generates volumes of complex ‘inventory’ data to develop the final set of indicators that include the total up-front carbon emissions data, much of which is highly confidential and will never be released, even to the client involved, because it often involves the direct provision of confidential information from third-party suppliers under non-disclosure agreements. 

It scarcely needs restating that the consequences of not gaining rapid control of, and dramatically reducing humanity’s carbon footprint, locally and globally, will be catastrophic.

To read the original article visit: https://www.globalgreentag.co.za/read/1130/decarbonising-built-environment-through-materials-an.html 

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