Abstract
Highlights Protecting the climate is an indispensable contribution to the conservation of the ecosystem. One approach is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be within planetary boundaries. The quantification, allocation, assessment and control of GHG emissions affect a variety of actors, for example, manufacturers, planners, designers, clients, investors, contractors, facility managers, policy-makers, regulators, environmental economists, etc. To be effective, these actors need indicators to measure and influence GHG emissions associated with the creation and operation of the built environment. This editorial introduces the special issue and considers the creation and use of a coherent set of carbon metrics across different scales: construction products, buildings, neighbourhoods, cities as well as building stocks. Of particular importance is the agreement of clear terms, definitions, system boundaries and calculation procedures. Questions about scalability and aggregation are addressed as well as methodological issues associated with the use of biomass, a fair approach to budget-sharing and the design of emission balances including compensation options (e.g. offsetting and sequestration). Complementing the carbon metric approach is the development of a scalable carbon budget to determine the allocation of GHGs to a specific context: building, neighbourhood, city or building stock.
Highlights
The principle of staying within planetary environmental boundaries is recognised internationally. This idea is endorsed by a wide variety of professional groups and institutions and is today reflected in the internationally recognised Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13: ‘Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’ (UN 2015)
The built environment makes a significant contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to climate change
A carbon metric can be understood as a standard of measurement of GHG emissions
Summary
The principle of staying within planetary environmental boundaries is recognised internationally. It provides a process for creating a coherent set of targets and indicators based on the safe planetary boundary for GHG emissions. Such goals and approaches are indispensable elements of an overall strategy They provide the wide range of built-environment actors with the necessary target values and assessment criteria. A carbon metric can be understood as a standard of measurement of GHG emissions It is based on transparent, verifiable, traceable, and reliable GHG accounting and assessment at all scales. In addition to the examples mentioned, the principles and rules for a carbon performance assessment based on the determination of a 100-year global warming potential (GWP 100) of emitted GHGs are part of European standards for the environmental performance assessment of construction works, developed in the context of CEN TC 350.1. For large-scale observation it is possible to create measurement by remote sensing
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