Research issues in analysing embodied carbon in buildings

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increased focus on creating sustainable buildings that have a reduced carbon footprint. The primary method to achieve this has been through incorporating strategies to reduce the operational carbon of the buildings, which is found to be easier to analyse and address. However, as the industry aims to produce ‘carbon neutral’ buildings with extremely low operational carbon, the embodied carbon is typically not considered. As a consequence of this, there has been a net increase of embodied carbon within low energy buildings. Typically, embodied carbon accounts for 20% of the total life cycle carbon of a building. However, it is found that in low energy and sustainable buildings, embodied carbon accounts for a larger percentage thus increasing the importance of understanding and mitigating embodied carbon. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to synthesise relevant literature in order to discover research issues related to embodied carbon in buildings. Key literature findings revealed the importance of concurrently addressing embodied carbon with operational carbon, the complexities associated with analysing embodied carbon and ways to address reduction of embodied carbon in buildings. These findings will eventually help to shape future research that will focus on achieving zero carbon targets globally.