- Five EU countries – Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Sweden – have passed laws to regulate whole-life carbon emissions from buildings, but the EU is hesitant to follow suit, instead proposing measuring emissions associated with building materials.
- Whether it be cement, wood, glass, bricks or sand, every material comes with its own climate cost and reducing these emissions will be crucial to reach the EU’s objective of becoming climate neutral by 2050.
- One key proposal under the initiative is to make “carbon value engineering” a requirement in new building projects by establishing “standards for evaluating embodied carbon and operational carbon emissions in the construction of buildings” and infrastructures.
The race to track and eliminate ’embodied’ emissions from buildings
