The UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard Guide: Part 3: Operational energy
Whole life carbon and embodied carbon
Achieving net zero carbon in construction can be a technical, often complex challenge. Designing to reduce whole life carbon is an essential part of rising to that challenge.
Whole life carbon leaders
Total of 2 people
About whole life carbon
Max Fordham’s whole life carbon team is truly multidisciplinary, with backgrounds that range from ‘traditional’ mechanical and electrical engineering to architecture, structural engineering, and Passivhaus design. With the thorough understanding of the whole building’s design and construction that such a range of expertise brings, we not only provide the robust and detailed embodied carbon modelling required for BREEAM certification and planning compliance, but also the strategic upfront advice and optioneering that helps result in buildings that are truly low carbon.
Simply put, the whole life carbon equation is operational carbon + embodied carbon. Operational carbon is associated with a building’s actual energy and water use: its measurement and reduction through good building services design or decarbonisation is a well-established process. Embodied carbon is more nebulous: it is the carbon tied up in a building’s construction materials (steel, concrete, plastic, timber, brick) and associated construction processes. This is challenging to measure and requires collaboration from the whole team.
Working closely with the client and design team, our consultants set embodied carbon targets and measurement strategies; advise on the design decisions – such as material selection, façade design, massing, fit-out, and MEP strategies – that will have the biggest embodied carbon impacts; advise on circular economy strategies; and provide invaluable data-driven input into early-stage decisions – such as retrofit versus demolition – that can have wide-ranging and far-reaching impacts on a project’s long term financial and carbon costs.
For us, whole life carbon considerations are not a constraint – they’re an opportunity to deliver truly sustainable buildings.
Case studies
Total of 4 projects
All services
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All buildings should be comfortable and a pleasure to be in: warm, well-lit, well-ventilated, well-used, and well-loved. Our mechanical and electrical engineering, vertical transportation, acoustics, daylight, and lighting design services can help ensure just that. We maximise passive measures such as natural ventilation and daylighting, seamlessly dovetailing our designs with the building’s own form and architecture to result in simple, low-energy, and low-cost building services.
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In the face of an increasingly urgent climate emergency, it’s crucial that buildings consume as little energy as possible in their operation. Low energy, low carbon, and low operational costs are our watchwords when it comes to designing new buildings or retrofitting existing ones. We help our clients build sustainability goals into masterplans or early-stage feasibility studies, decarbonise existing estates, and optimise how a building performs against its targets for sustainability and user comfort.
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Meeting net zero carbon targets and minimising a building’s impact on the environment means reducing embodied carbon – the carbon tied up in the materials like steel, concrete, and plastic that go into a building’s construction and services design – as much as operational carbon (the carbon a building produces in its heating, cooling, and lighting). We facilitate material reuse with circular economy strategies, steer low embodied carbon design from the earliest project stages with whole life carbon assessments, and offer advice on planning and compliance, all helping to reduce the carbon footprint of construction.