Nick Johns-Wickberg
The Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance (MECLA) is hosting a spotlight event on removing carbon from design processes. The online event will take place on Wednesday, June 5 from 11am to 12.30pm.
Worldwide, the building and construction industry accounts for nearly 40 per cent of carbon emissions. As energy production decarbonises over the coming decades, embodied carbon will contribute a greater overall percentage to global emissions unless action is taken. According to a Green Building Council of Australia report, without intervention embodied carbon could represent 85 per cent of building emissions by 2050.
AIRAH Advocacy and Policy Manager Mark Vender, who chairs MECLA’s working group for building services, says the design process offers huge opportunities for reducing embodied carbon in buildings through material selection, construction, functionality, and a construction project’s end-of-life-phase, including material reuse, recovery and recycling.
“Considering embodied carbon in the design process can drive innovative approaches that use less materials, or lower-carbon materials,” he says. “And it’s worth remembering that when we avoid ‘up front’ emissions, it has an immediate impact – the reductions happen right now, rather than over the life of a building.
“In the HVAC&R space, something as straightforward as changing duct profile can reduce the amount of embodied carbon in a building. And it may in fact be cheaper.”
MECLA’s spotlight event will provide an opportunity to listen to experts in the field talking about how to start decarbonising design today and what tools are available to people in the industry.
Presenters
- Dr Dominque Hes, M.AIRAH, Chair of Greenfleet
- Filomena Beshara, Sustainability Manager at Built
- Paul Reidy, Partner at fitzpatrick + partners
- Paul Stoller, M.AIRAH, Director at Atelier Ten
- Tom Petty, Co-Founder of CarbonTrace
To register for the free event, click here.
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