Smart Cities Lead Way in Cutting Embodied Carbon in Construc

The built environment is the single largest contributor of CO2 emissions, generating around 40% of greenhouse gases (GHG), most of which comes from urban development.

As a result, the pressure is on the construction industry to minimise carbon emissions, and cities including Vancouver, New York City, Los Angeles and London are in the vanguard in this regard.

A recent report from the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Urban Transformation features best practices developed by pioneer cities that are reducing carbon emissions from urban development projects.

The Centre for Urban Transformation (CUT) advances public-private collaboration in cities to enable more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient communities and local economies.

CUT stresses that, as cities grow in population and importance, global urban floor area is expected to double by 2060, the equivalent of building another New York City every month for the next 40 years. 

The CUT report – Reducing Embodied Carbon in Cities: Nine Solutions for Greener Buildings and Communities – highlights innovative solutions for all phases of construction and demolition. The report was authored in partnership with professional services giant, Accenture.

“In recent years, a growing number of cities have taken decisive action to help bolster the operational efficiency of buildings,” says Jeff Merritt, Head of Urban Transformation at the World Economic Forum. “But despite these gains a more robust approach is needed to tackle carbon emissions across the entire lifecycle of these structures.”

He adds that new ‘embodied carbon’ solutions – such as rethinking traditional construction methods and materials, to breathing new life into otherwise obsolete buildings – are rapidly emerging to tackle this issue.

The report references a number of city case studies that demonstrate this trend:

• The One Westside Office Campus in Los Angeles, once a struggling mall that will become a state-of-the-art UCLA science campus, demonstrates the possibilities of adaptive reuse. More than 75% of construction and demolition debris for the building was diverted from landfills, reducing the embodied carbon by 33% compared to a ground-up scenario.
• A programme run by San Diego’s local utility company, is helping fleet owners and operators eliminate emissions by transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs). The goal is to serve a minimum of 3,000 medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, many of which are used by the construction industry, at 300 customer sites throughout the company’s service area.
• London’s Material Reuse Portal offers a user-friendly interface for stakeholders across the construction industry to engage in sustainable material reuse practices, thereby increasing adaptive reuse of construction materials and reducing carbon emissions.

• The report also features case studies of cities that are developing a variety of approaches – from mandates and incentives to providing benchmarking tools – to reduce embodied carbon emissions from construction practices. This includes:

• Vancouver, which enacted an embodied carbon limit on all new construction, and also developed a benchmarking tool to measure emissions.
• Seattle, which has an expedited permitting process for projects that meet embodied carbon standards. 
• New York City, whose Clean Construction Executive Order mandated all capital project agencies to lower embodied carbon from municipal construction projects.

“Cities are at the forefront of efforts to reduce carbon emissions in both new development and redevelopment within the built environment,” says Jennifer Holmes, Accenture’s lead for cities, transportation and infrastructure. “This initiative is focused on the increasing importance of cities establishing clear targets, incentives and pathways for emission reduction, in collaboration with the private and non-profit sectors.”

Another important smart cities initiative is C40, a global network of 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis. 

The C40 has launched a tech initiative called the Cities Clean Construction Accelerator, designed to reduce embodied emissions by at least 50% for all new buildings, major retrofits, and infrastructure by 2030.

"Cities drive the demand for the development, maintenance and renovation of the places we rely on daily – our homes, schools, hospitals, streets and other vital infrastructures,” says Cécile Faraud, Head of Clean Construction, C40 Cities. 

She adds: “We have the momentum to ensure the built environment is decarbonised, climate resilient and equitable.”

A total of 10 leading cities participated in the C40 Clean Construction programme in 2019, and now the organisation is working with 45 cities across all continents. 

Faraud adds: “The breadth and variety of city action can inspire the sector’s confidence to invest in just solutions. The policy model and adoption playbook are great tools for accelerating the global update of embodied carbon policies."

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