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Are you interested in embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions of buildings?

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Our summary today works with the article titled A review of existing policy for reducing embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions of buildings from 2022 by Katie Skillington, Robert H. Crawford, Georgia Warren-Myers, and Kathryn Davidson, published in Energy Policy journal.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Katie Skillington in episode 232 talking about the built environment’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector. This article presents the policy landscape which is dominated by voluntary instruments and confined to inconsistent applications across lower levels of governance, but also signals of change for emission reduction.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Embodied energy (EE) and greenhouse gas emissions (EGHG) in buildings are becoming more significant as buildings become operationally more efficient, but current policies addressing them are mostly voluntary and lack stringent targets.
2. Key challenges in effective EE/EGHG governance include unclear terminology, inconsistent methodologies, lack of harmonized benchmarks, and absence of financial incentives.
3. A holistic, multi-sector policy approach with ambitious targets, standardized methods, and diverse mechanisms is needed to achieve zero emission buildings and contribute to global climate action.

You can find the article through this link.

Abstract: The building sector is a significant contributor to global energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions and thus has a major role in combating climate change. To date, efforts to address this issue have focussed on reducing energy demand during building operation, resulting in significant reductions in this area. However, recent studies have shown that substantial improvements to operational energy efficiency have increased the relative significance of indirect or embodied energy demands and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Subsequently, policies addressing this next frontier of energy and emissions reductions are emerging. To understand different approaches and inform future development, this study reviews existing policy mechanisms targeting embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector for four countries – Australia, Canada, USA and United Kingdom. The study found that voluntary instruments dominate the policy landscape, with regulatory measures largely absent at national levels and confined to inconsistent application across lower levels of governance. Signals of change emerging from the analysis include growing private sector investment and increasing quantitative targets for reduction. The study concludes with the challenges facing this sector of energy governance, alongside recommendations for regulated caps, mandatory LCA reporting, prerequisite requirements in voluntary instruments, data accessibility and resolving methodological inconsistencies.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.006 – Interview with Daniel Prohasky about embodied energy in carbon panels;
• No.192 – Interview with Alison Scotland about sustainable built environment standards;
• No.196 – Interview with Alan Pears about embodied energy in buildings;

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