Embodied carbon emissions in the UK’s built environment have not been reduced at the rate needed to reach net zero, the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has warned.
The assessment of the organization’s objectives, presented in a 2021 report called Net Zero Carbon Roadmap for Lifefound that the sector needs to decarbonise twice as fast as it currently is by 2025.
Embodied carbon, a term that describes activities that come from non-operational activities such as the extraction, preparation and transport of building materials, fell by just 4% between 2018 and 2022, according to UKGBC calculations.
This was despite the fall in construction activity in 2020 caused by the Covid pandemic.
To meet national net-zero targets, the UK’s built environment sector needed to reduce embodied carbon emissions by 17% over the period, the UKGBC said.
However, overall carbon emissions from the sector fell by 13%, but still fell short of the 19% target between 2018 and 2021.
The report comes as world leaders meet at COP28 in Dubai to discuss future agreements for carbon reduction policy.
Also presented at COP28 this week was an important report called Global turning points, in which more than 200 researchers worked. It found that five environmental risk thresholds are at imminent risk of being exceeded and three more could be exceeded by the 2030s as the world exceeds 1.5 degrees of warming.
The effects could be of a “magnitude never before faced by mankind”, causing financial devastation, mass displacement of people and half of the world’s cultivated area to the loss of wheat and maize.
The built environment, including property and construction, is the largest source of climate emissions in the UK economy after surface transport.
Worldwide it accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions and is currently at a record level.
UKGBC chief executive Smith Mordak said: “Unprecedented global events have shaped the story of the built environment over the past four years, but despite forced emissions reductions during the pandemic, this report from progress makes one thing clear: our industry is not moving fast enough.
“The timeline for meeting net zero cannot be extended. We must now reduce emissions twice as fast as we have been to get back on track. The later we leave it, the harder it will be and the greater the lost opportunities for addressing the interconnected nature and social crises”.
The organization called on the government to reverse its recent reduction in net zero plans, to incentivize widespread home improvement works and prioritize climate issues in the planning system.
Elsewhere this week, a sustainability report by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors found that 43% of construction professionals worldwide do not measure the carbon incorporated in their projects.
