Establishing a common framework of understanding for low-carbon construction materials in Europe.
<aside> <img src="/icons/wall_red.svg" alt="/icons/wall_red.svg" width="40px" /> Embodied carbon refers to the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with the entire life cycle of a product, material, or building. It includes all carbon emissions produced during raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, construction, use, and end-of-life disposal or recycling.
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This work sets out to provide a foundational understanding of embodied carbon in the EU, encompassing both the technical and the policy sides.
It is clear that embodied carbon represents an important share of buildings’ emissions, and that to fully decarbonise the sector, it needs to be tackled. The largest share of embodied emissions come from the manufacturing of construction products, whose decarbonisation necessitates significant efforts.
Said efforts must be grounded in a common understanding of embodied carbon across all stakeholders, in particular of what the characteristics of a low-carbon material are. Evidently, this is not a straight-forward question, but rather one that requires research, reflection, and dialogue among stakeholders.
To answer these questions, this report proposes a 3-criteria approach to qualitatively assess the decarbonisation potential of a proposed pathway:
Taking the standard production process of cement and steel as a starting point (as they represent the largest share of emissions from construction materials), a review of the potential decarbonisation pathways for each sector is done, looking at:
For cement: