Industry-Wide Consultation to Dramatically Reduce Carbon Emissions in the Built Environment

As Australia’s electricity grid decarbonises, the proportion of embodied emissions (from the construction of buildings) will drastically eclipse emissions from buildings as they operate (operational emissions). This will make **embodied emissions our number one decarbonisation target in buildings.** **Fairly measuring and comparing embodied emissions will enable significant decarbonisation** by supporting policy and procurement targets, regulations, funding, and design/construction decisions. **Currently, there is no single accepted approach to calculating embodied emissions from buildings in Australia or globally**. The design of the NABERS Embodied Carbon Tool addresses this challenge.

A future **NABERS tool to measure and compare embodied emissions** in new buildings and major refurbishments. The design - comprising **ten integrated solutions** - informs the development of **a minimum viable product** (MVP) due out later this year. In addition to informing the MVP (allowing the use of the tool ASAP), the design contains **a roadmap** which includes ways to expand the scope of carbon emissions accounted for in the MVP. See image #1 The NABERS National Steering Committee - comprising State and Territory governments and 14 industry bodies representing stakeholders across the building sector - endorsed our design after approximately 12 months.

**For now** our research has: - Enabled the development of the NABERS’ embodied carbon tool. - Underpinned national policy recommendations for sustainable buildings. - Supported the NSW Planning Policy on Sustainable Buildings. - Contributed to the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA) Embodied Carbon guide. - Influenced National and NSW approaches to embodied carbon in infrastructure projects, scaling our impact dramatically beyond buildings. **Once launched**, our tool will enable: - Governments, investors, and tenants to set ambitious decarbonisation targets, policies, and regulations. - Buildings to target, compare and reduce emissions via a shift toward sustainable building designs, reuse and low-emitting building materials - Significant decarbonisation across Australia.

We achieved consensus on the design of **a minimum viable product (tool) and roadmap** relating to **a highly complex and technical design challenge** involving multiple industry groups with competing needs and commercial interests. This **”solved” a problem that all experts (including us) thought was irreconcilable**. This means we now have industry supporting a way forward in areas that they started out opposing. This includes brokering agreement between developers, building owners and tenants, sustainability consultants working in embodied carbon and those providing embodied carbon tools, architects, engineers, construction companies, manufacturers, policymakers, investors, standards bodies, academics, industry peak bodies and industry associations). See image #2 _”You’ve listened to our industry!?!”_ - Industry stakeholder with initial concerns _”I can’t believe we’ve got to something we agree on, especially without anyone punching each other.”_ - Supporting consultant. This allows us to **support behaviour change to urgently reduce embodied emission**s by: - Allowing the property sector to compare building performance fairly, influencing investment, design and procurement decisions. - Incentivising major refurbishments rather than demolition, more sustainable building designs, re-use of building materials and products, and the procurement of lower-emission building products (which will drive manufacturing innovation, resulting in the uptake of these materials beyond buildings - e.g. to infrastructure projects).