Elephants in the Lab: Part II

We need to question how green it is to build on green sites altogether.

I say this because green sites mean building in locations with little or no sustainable travel infrastructure.

If you look at pg 20 in the RICS Whole Life Carbon Calculator Guide (2023), 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.”

User carbon will be critical but is still only advisory. It is not yet required for reporting.

However, it says a lot about our industry’s direction of travel.

That’s why Elliott Wood’s Head of Transport, Melanie de Wet, has developed a transport carbon tracker that looks at a building’s user travel carbon emissions.

With the tracker, we can compare the travel emissions of identical buildings in different locations. We’ve found a strong link between user carbon and proximity to sustainable travel infrastructure (i.e. trains and tubes).

For example, for a new building in central London, it can take between 10-15 years for the user travel emissions to overtake the emissions created to construct that building in the first place (the embodied carbon). But when you drag and drop that same building next to the M25, the travel emissions overtake the embodied carbon in 12 months!

We know location matters for real estate. Turns out it matters a lot for a building’s carbon performance as well.

As an industry, we’ve been focused on operational and embodied carbon. But now it’s time for us to consider user carbon in decision-making as well.