
Emission Omissions: Carbon accounting gaps in the built environment
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies are the main tool used to measure the carbon footprints of building products at each phase of their cradle-to-grave lifespan (i.e., production, use and end of life).
With over 30 per cent of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in Canada coming from the communities and structures we build for ourselves, accurately measuring building materials' carbon footprints is key to crafting meaningful policy—from building codes to product preference—to meet carbon reduction targets. There is a clear need for us to get this right.
While LCAs are the best-available tool for evaluating the GHG (and other) performance of alternative building products and designs, policy-makers and building designers should be aware there are also limitations, challenges and uncertainties that must be considered.
Media Release: Tool for tracking GHGs in Canada’s buildings has “built in” errors: study
Emission Omissions: Carbon Accounting Gaps in the Built Environment delves into those uncertainties. The report considers:
- Limitations, challenges and uncertainties in existing LCAs, quantifying their significance to the current understanding of the relative GHG performance of buildings made alternatively of concrete, steel or wood structural elements.
- Best practices that could improve the reliability and usefulness of LCA to support effective policies to decarbonize the built environment.
- Longer-term opportunities to reduce life-cycle emissions in the built environment by supporting decarbonization efforts in the concrete, steel and forestry sectors.
The report includes three key recommendations to policy-makers looking to reduce carbon in the building sector:
- Building efficiency and longevity should be the priority for decarbonizing the built environment.
- LCA is the right approach, but more data, transparency and robust standards are needed, especially with respect to biogenic carbon.
- To address embodied GHG emissions in buildings, policy-makers and building professionals need to focus equally on material efficiency and incenting decarbonization across all material manufacturing sectors.
The report was guided and peer reviewed by a diverse Advisory Committee of:
- Keith Brooks, Environmental Defence
- Trevor Hesselink, CPAWS
- Dr. Jay Malcolm, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto
- Jamie Meil, Athena Sustainable Materials Institute
- Jean-François Ménard, International Reference Centre for the Life Cycle of Products
- Heidi Nesbitt, Local Practice Architecture + Design
- Dr. Jeff Wells, Boreal Song Bird Initiative
- Scott Demark, BuildGreen Solutions
Participating experts
You might also be interested in
New Report Finds Carbon Capture And Storage Far Too Expensive
A new report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to be very expensive in Canada. According to the report, which focuses on carbon capture in the context of Canada's oil and gas industry, the climate solution’s persistently high costs are rooted in the "high design complexity and the need for customization."
CCS Can't Compete with Renewables, Won't Deliver by 2030, Report Finds
Carbon capture and storage may have an important role to play in hard-to-decarbonize sectors like iron and steel, but won't pay off for oil and gas companies without continuing government subsidies, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) concludes in an analysis released this week.
Report finds carbon capture's 'stubbornly high' prices are likely here to stay
Canada's oil and gas industry says costly technology it plans to use to reduce its climate footprint requires more investments from the federal government. If governments lend a hand now, the industry maintains the technology will become more affordable over time as more projects proceed, but a new analysis casts doubt on that claim. "Carbon capture and storage is expensive, and the costs are not likely to come down in the timeframe needed to meet our climate targets," said Laura Cameron, one of the report's three authors and a policy adviser for the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Carbon capture projects are too costly, have ‘questionable’ benefits, report finds
Technology the oil industry is counting on to reduce emissions–carbon capture and storage–is too expensive and difficult to deploy quickly enough to help Canada meet its climate commitments, a global environmental think tank says. Relying on carbon capture and storage to cut greenhouse gases from oil and gas production will mean large public subsidies for projects that are unable to compete on costs against expanding renewable energy sources, rendering the benefits "questionable," the International Institute for Sustainable Development said in a report released Thursday.