This report was authored by Matthew Adams, Victoria Burrows, Stephen Richardson, of the World Green Building Council with support from Ramboil and C40. and published in February 2022. Carbon emissions are released not only during operational life but also during the manufacturing, transportation, construction, and end-of-life phases of all built assets – buildings and infrastructure. These emissions, commonly referred to as embodied carbon, have largely been overlooked historically but contribute around 11% of all global as well as the embodied carbon of individual materials. Achieving net zero embodied carbon for the entire sector will require far greater collaboration along the whole value chain to support efforts to decarbonize industry and to develop and deploy more low embodied carbon alternatives. Such collaboration allows businesses and organizations to identify and have confidence in the environmental, social, and financial benefits of taking a leadership position in the transition to a decarbonized built environment. This 3-phase report describes the literature review of the challenges and the possible pathways to overcome them with a final review by many experts and stakeholders in the value chain to improve the recommendations.

Keywords: Architecture/Engineering, Building Retrofits, Climate Change, Construction/New Buildings, Protocols/Standards, Zero Net Energy, Emissions, Embodied Carbon, Net Zero