New Builds & Embodied Carbon: Resources and Financial Support

Published September 2023

Guidance and Reports

• Net Zero Public Buildings Standard and document suite supports a challenging, credible path to net zero carbon materials and energy supplies for all public sector non-domestic buildings.
• Guidance on Developing a Climate Change Impact Assessment framework created by the SSN CCIA task and finish group.
• PAS 2080: Carbon Management in Infrastructure
• Guidance Document for PAS 2080 by the Construction Leadership Council
• The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Guidance Document for PAS 2080: carbon management in buildings and infrastructure
• The Construction Leadership Council’s Guidance Document for PAS 2080.
• The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Whole Life Carbon Assessment for the Built Environment guidance
• The Scottish Government has developed guidance Scottish City Region and Regional Growth Deals Carbon Management Guidance for Projects and Programmes (Sept 2021) for project owners on managing and minimising potential carbon emissions associated with growth deal projects.
• See here a summary of the SSN 2023 Conference breakout session on Embedding Carbon Impact Assessments in Decision Making
• See here a summary of the Net Zero Public Sector Buildings & Reporting SSN Conference 2022 Session.
• This SSN webinar on Tackling Embodied Carbon presents information about Scottish Water’s actions to tackle embodied emissions in capital projects, products and infrastructure. It includes information on the rules and tools being used, and how these are being applied in practice.
• The UKGBC’s 2021 Whole Life Carbon Net Zero Roadmap for the Built Environment includes a carbon footprint for the UK built environment, a Net Zero Carbon trajectory to 2050, and policy recommendations with industry action plans to deliver the 2050 scenario.
• UK GBC’s Embodied Carbon - Practical Guidance
• The Scottish government website on building, planning and design policies.
• London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) is a great resource with:
• Climate Emergency Design Guide
• Embodied Carbon Primer. 
• Retrofit vs Rebuild
• Operational Carbon in Whole Life Carbon Assessments
• LETI Whole Life Carbon webinar series
• Improving Consistency in Whole Life Carbon Assessment and Reporting
• Defining and Aligning: Whole Life Carbon & Embodied Carbon (including reporting template)
• The NHS Sustainable Design and Construction Guide.
• The Building Services Compliance Guides 2022 for Scotland (Feb 2023) provides detailed guidance for the installation of fixed building services in new and existing buildings in support of compliance with the energy efficiency requirements set out under standards 6.3 to 6.7 of the building regulations as set out in section 6 of the 2022 the respective Technical Handbook. It covers the design, installation, and commissioning of low carbon heat generation by heat pumps, solar thermal panels, biomass boilers, direct electric space heating and micro-combined heat and power systems as well as links to further practical guidance and UK and European Standards. See here the:
• The Domestic Building Services Compliance Guide
• The Non-Domestic Building Services Compliance Guide
• SCAPE Scotland provide a guide to delivering the Government's Net Zero Public Sector Building Standard through their SCAPE Scotland Life Cycle Delivery Guide.
• Catapult Energy Systems have developed tools and templates, specific to the public sector, to aid detailed feasibility studies for investible decarbonisation measures such as low carbon heating. This includes buildings fabric, site energy demand and BMW intervention estimator.
• Passivhaus Trust offers technical guidance and research reports, from introductory tips to best practice guides on Embodied Carbon. Many of their on-demand courses offer free access to local authorities & social housing providers. They also have a list of published guidance from other organisations.
• The World Green Building Council is a global action network comprised of over 70 Green Building Councils. It aims to transform the building and construction sector across three strategic areas - climate action, health & wellbeing, and resources & circularity - by aiding the uptake of sustainable and decarbonised built environments. They host informative webinars and have published reports.
• The UK Green Building Council is the membership-led industry network radically transforming the sustainability of the built environment.
• Electricity network constraints and the 2024 New Build Heat Standard is research looking into the network constraints issues associated with the electrification of heat for domestic new build developments.
• The Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) Buildings & Energy findings report discusses how to shift the UK built stock to net-zero by 2050 in the most cost effective, resilient, acceptable and practical way, maximising the multiple benefits and minimising unintended consequences.
• The Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions has published much research on Buildings and Heating.
• Building Research Establishment website.
• Building & Cities: Why Building Regulations Must Incorporate Embodied Carbon (2021).
• World Economic Forum Scaling Low-Carbon Design and Construction with Concrete: Enabling the Path to Net-Zero for Buildings and Infrastructure whitepaper.

Financial Support

• The Scottish government has developed a range of funding programmes to support the development and deployment of low carbon heating and energy efficiency in homes and buildings. More information can be found in chapter 6 of the Heat in Buildings Strategy. The SG has pledged £1.8 billion of capital funding over the course of this current Parliament (2021-2026) for heat decarbonisation, allowing for the acceleration of energy efficiency upgrades and renewable heating deployment. 
• The Scottish Green Public Sector Estate Decarbonisation Scheme provides capital funding to the public sector to enable retrofitting of energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation to existing publicly owned buildings. It will distribute £200 million of capital support pledged between 2021-2026 to aid the decarbonisation of Scotland’s public sector estates.