Archinect - News

British AEC groups urge government action on embodied carbon regulations

2024-01-31T19:21:00-05:00

A group of 11 AEC industry groups in the United Kingdom, including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chartered Institute of Building, and UK Green Building Council, have joined together in urging the government toward taking action on restricting embodied carbon emissions in the built environment ahead of an important national election that’s expected for November.

Their call endorses an amalgam of existing policy pushes while espousing lawmakers to include at least a portion of its findings into their respective manifestos with benchmarks for specific mandates and enforcements set for the end of this year, 2026, and 2028, respectively.

RIBA President Muyiwa Oki said: “Our message is clear — embodied carbon regulation is critical to reaching net zero. As built environment professionals, we understand our duty to reduce emissions and have been leading the charge. We now need urgent action from the next government to deliver a greener future that we deserve.”

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COP28 deal agreed amid controversy over ‘phasing out’ of fossil fuels

2023-12-14T11:44:00-05:00

A climate deal has been struck by global leaders at the COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai following days of negotiations. The agreement calls for all countries to move away from using fossil fuels, though stops short of phasing them out. The final text, signed by 200 countries, recognizes a “need for deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The pact calls on countries to “transition away” from fossil fuels for energy systems but not for other sectors such as plastics, transport, or agriculture. At the beginning of the conference, the hosting UAE president had proposed a deal to “phase out” fossil fuels entirely; language explicitly called for by a coalition of over 100 countries. However, an initial draft of the deal removed the reference to “phasing out” fossil fuels, as did the final agreement, leading one delegate representing small island states to claim the final text contained a “litany of loopholes.”

Among the commitments in the deal are a tripling o...

Perkins&Will revises firm-wide Green Operations Plan in the wake of latest UN climate report

2023-05-08T14:04:00-04:00

Perkins&Will has released an update to its Green Operations Plan in the wake of the United Nation’s latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which was critical of the strides global efforts have been able to make in avoiding a catastrophic 1.5° Celsius rise in temperature by 2040.

According to the firm, the update touches eight different project categories with three key “enhancements” that work to phase out plastic use while encouraging further decarbonization and acknowledging Indigenous cultures as sources of guidance and rightful stewards of the land.

“As a large firm with 28 studios around the world, we have an enormous opportunity to reduce our environmental impact even further — and to lead by example,” Jason F. McLennan, the chief sustainability officer of Perkins&Will, said in a statement. “Our enhanced Green Operations Plan offers specific guidance in just about every scenario that might unfold in our day-to-day business operations, from how we tra...

Arup measures carbon emissions of 1,000 projects for COP27, calls for greater effort to collect industry climate data

2022-11-15T12:27:00-05:00

Arup has announced the creation of a dataset which catalogs the whole life carbon emissions of buildings in its portfolio. The dataset, unveiled to coincide with COP27, has so far calculated the emissions for almost 1,000 Arup projects across 30 countries.

The data represents an effort by Arup to calculate their ‘carbon handprint,’ which quantifies the scale of emissions arising from the firm’s design portfolio. To collect and analyze the data, Arup developed a new software platform called Zero, into which over 1,100 Arup engineers and designers fed data on 954 projects.

Related on Archinect: Arup formed part of the team who recently delivered a 'first of its kind' mass timber office extension in Washington DC

“In taking this crucial first step, we have been driven by a determination to overcome the barriers to scaling net zero buildings,” explained Arup chairman Alan Belfield. “Comparable and open whole life carbon data is the tool that will allow actors across the global property ...