If your customers aren’t asking you about your carbon footprint yet, they will be soon…
Every day, the demand on organisations to measure and report on their products’ carbon footprint increases and rightly so. Just this week, the IPCC released a report which emphasises there is only a brief window of time left to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But whether it’s a new policy set by Government, or a new Net Zero Roadmap by an industry body, customer or competitor, the pressure is on.
Last year, the Construction Leadership Council published its Co2nstruct Zero Performance Framework, setting out the headline commitments and priorities to achieving carbon reduction at a sector level. One of those priorities is:
‘Implementing carbon measurement, to support our construction projects in making quantifiable decisions to remove carbon’
In other words, measuring carbon is key to unlocking tangible carbon reductions. Accelar was involved in measuring the whole life carbon footprint of innovative precast concrete products as part of the Innovate-UK funded project ‘Decarbonising Precast Concrete’. This formed part of a collaborative effort, working alongside project partners Akerlof and others, to reduce the embodied carbon footprint of existing Ministry of Justice (the customer) secure accommodation designs that resulted in a 40% reduction in carbon emissions. Projects like that are great for learning lessons that can be applied and scaled elsewhere, including casting light on what is needed to produce a robust product carbon footprint.
The top three lessons we learnt were:
Know your supply chain. You need to know what you are buying, and where it is coming from, to appropriately capture the carbon associated with your products. There is also huge potential to collaborate with your supply chain. Let them know your ambition and work together to drive low carbon outcomes.
There are resources out there that can help you. Standards, such as EN 15804 for construction products, offer guidance on how to measure a carbon footprint and there are carbon experts out there to collaborate with and support you on this journey. There may also be funding opportunities to look out for. The Decarbonising Precast Concrete project, for example, was funded by Innovate UK.
Stay positive and don’t be put off by the scale of the task. It can be overwhelming when you get started measuring carbon – don’t be put off. Take it bit by bit, scope out the size of the work and prioritise where impact is highest. The end result will enable you (and your customer) to understand the carbon impact of your products and be in a much stronger position to drive critical emissions reductions.