The real estate industry accounts for more than a third of CO2 emissions. Calculating carbon emissions at each stage of a building’s life cycle – construction, operations, and end of life – is necessary to quantify the real carbon footprint of buildings.
Launched at MIPIM in 2022, the Low Carbon Building Initiative (LCBI) gathers major real estate stakeholders to promote low carbon buildings and reduce the CO2 emissions of European real estate by half (measured in a Life-Cycle Analysis). After a year of collaborative benchmarking, data analysis, and expert1 reviews, LCBI reveals the methodology for the first version of the Low Carbon Building Initiative label.
There are many discrepancies across Europe in how Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) is used to assess building’s carbon emission, with many different indicators, study periods, scopes, and reference areas being used. Building upon key European standards and frameworks2, the methodology fostered by LCBI aims to harmonize the measurement and practice of Life-Cycle Analysis across Europe with a pure carbon indicator (kgCO2e/m2), consistent with local regulations. Considering the entire life-cycle, the future LCBI label will assess building’s performance on three criteria:
- the embodied carbon (emissions linked to building elements) measured in kg CO2e/m² over 50 years
- the operational carbon (based on energy consumption and sources) measured in kg CO2e/m²/year
- biogenic carbon stored (use of bio-sourced materials) in the building measured in kg CO2e/m²
You can read the full press release now at the link below
