Breaking the transport net zero bottleneck
19.02.2025
Written by Melanie de Wet
Associate Director Transport
Carbon-critical, critically undermanaged
Transport is carbon-critical, but it's critically undermanaged.
At 26% (2021), transport represents over a quarter of the UK’s emissions. This makes it the largest GHG-emitting sector. Why?
Local authorities aim for net zero by 2030, but emission tracking is inconsistent, and progress slow. While emissions from other sectors have halved since 1990, transport has seen less than a 3% reduction.
Our research points to another bottleneck.
We analysed the transport impact across 20 years for our projects located in Central, Inner and Outer London. An Outer London location significantly increased the impact of transport carbon.
Location, location, location
We also found building’s transport emissions can exceed whole life (operational & embodied) emissions in less than 20 years.
Sometimes less than 10 depending on the land use and building location.
It’s not just about what and how we build, but where. The location of your building matters.
It determines your users’ proximity to public transport infrastructure.
This means deciding where to build is equally, if not more, critical to decarbonising our cities than embodied and operational carbon decisions.
Transport is losing the race
There’s progress in measuring and managing operational and embodied carbon, but efforts to address transport — or user carbon — lags.
For example, industry-standard sustainability certification schemes — BREEAM, WELL and LEED — do not set strict targets for user carbon emissions.
But there are signals for change.
In July 2024, the RICS Whole Life Carbon Calculator Guide was launched with guidance on user carbon. If you look at pg 20, you’ll see why user carbon will be critical in building more sustainably.
Module B8 describes user carbon:
‘covers user activities not included elsewhere and could include, for example, emissions from vehicles using a road or the impact of commuting to an office building over the in-use stage.’
Where we build matters as much as how we build.
We must break the transport net zero bottleneck. And as Kirsty and Phil say, it’s all about location, location, location.
