A ‘carbon burp’ is a term we’ve coined in house to describe the huge and immediate impact of embodied carbon on the environment and anthropogenic global heating. It’s a visceral depiction of the fact that, when we are already suffering the effects of the urgent climate crisis, the building emissions we really need to watch out for, are those from construction materials which are emitted before the building is in use. Carbon intensive building materials such as steel and concrete can make up 50% of the building’s entire life cycle carbon, which can increase to up to 90% as building operational emissions improve in efficiency.
As structural engineers we have a huge responsibility to mitigate these emissions as much as possible. We do this through various strategies including calculating the carbon of our designs to highlight ‘carbon hazards’. These can include over design, material specifications and certain design decisions that incur higher material use.
By highlighting these aspects to clients early on, we hope to influence the design and make positive steps towards carbon mitigation in every project. We will continue to explore these in our Sustainability Series in the coming weeks!
