A number of construction industry bodies are currently assisting the federal government in developing frameworks for measuring, certifying, and benchmarking emissions from construction and building materials, in a bid to reduce embodied carbon.

Reducing embodied carbon and emissions is imperative, with the Green Building Council of Australia finding that embodied carbon will make up approximately 85 percent of Australia’s built environment emissions by 2050. While the manufacturing and solutions industry is regulated, the construction industry is not, and should look to develop nationwide embodied carbon standards.

The Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (AIQS), Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders' Alliance (MECLA), NABERS and the GBCA are currently working on the framework. The NSW Government has been working to implement a new ratings tool to measure embodied carbon during design and construction for commercial and other non-residential buildings in NSW.

“As noted by Slattery in their Upfront Embodied Carbon Benchmarks report, at present there are no industry agreed frameworks in Australia and, as a result, there are inconsistencies in methodology, scope and data sources that deliver inconsistent results. Additionally, not all professionals use the same methods or data sources. This makes comparisons and benchmarking across different businesses/projects problematic,” says AIQS CEO, Grant Warner.

Offshore embodied targets and ratings systems do not apply to the Australian market, which underlines the need for a national framework. Companies and government agencies are currently relying on internal measures to provide metrics for reporting levels of embodied carbon and reduction targets for new construction projects.

“Developing Australian standards is an imperative step towards reducing embodied carbon emissions in future, especially if we are to achieve Net Zero carbon by 2035,” Warner says.

Independent reporting on embodied carbon is regarded as a positive transitional arrangement necessary to facilitate the present day construction of buildings with reduced embodied carbon.

“Having a transparent benchmark which can stand up to external scrutiny is ideal, but in the absence we should proceed with the metrics at hand,” says Warner. 

“We don’t need to stop the way companies are currently quantifying and benchmarking embodied carbon, we just need to get to a point where the industry can be on a level playing field and communicate to clients/stakeholders in a common language.”

The step that follows on from developing a measuring and benchmarking framework will be in ensuring emissions are correctly quantified on each and every future project.

“To deliver this, the role of the quantity surveying professional is justifiably the natural choice and one the AIQS is only too happy to support in developing,” Warner concludes.