Embodied Carbon
Why embodied carbon matters!
According to MBIE, carbon from buildings is responsible for 15% of Aotearoa’s overall emissions. Embodied carbon - stemming from the materials and products a building is made from – accounts for around half of these emissions. To meet our targets set by the Paris Agreement we need to slash embodied emissions by over 50% between now and 2030.
Embodied emissions cover the full lifecycle from raw material extraction to end-of-life when the building is demolished. The emissions that occur up to practical completion (handover to the client) are called upfront emissions and NZGBC believes these upfront emissions are the most important to reduce since they are occurring now and can be accurately accounted for.
We have produced a suite of tools, guides and methodologies to help support the sector get to grips with embodied carbon, providing a standardised calculation approach to add consistency across all buildings.
We're leading the way in embodied carbon reduction: Introducing the NZGBC Embodied Carbon Methodology and the Embodied Carbon Database
We have been working hard with the sector for a number of years to enable faster more consistent embodied carbon calculations.
We're proud to have launched the following three key initiatives:
- The NZGBC Embodied Carbon Methodology is an important step in providing a more consistent approach to embodied carbon assessments in the New Zealand construction industry. It will assist designers, engineers and construction companies in producing uniform embodied carbon calculations - preventing scenarios where differing outputs are generated for the same building. MBIE, Engineering NZ and Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects endorse this methodology.
- An embodied carbon database which offers a comprehensive online database of just under 1,300 building products and materials for use in embodied carbon assessments.
- And ECCHO, the popular modelling tool for designing healthy efficient homes, now includes embodied carbon assessment. ECCHO has become one stop shop for calculating the full lifecycle of a home.
For more information on about these resources, please check out the Technical Resources section below.
Technical Resources
Here you'll find our full suite of embodied carbon resources for residential and commercial builds.
We think it’s critical for the credibility of embodied carbon assessments for New Zealand to harmonise around a consistent calculation methodology. To help with this we have published the NZGBC Embodied Carbon Methodology, with the explicit endorsement of MBIE and EngineeringNZ– available here. This builds on, and complements, MBIE’s own Technical Methodology.
We now offer a comprehensive online database of just under 1,300 building products and materials for use in embodied carbon assessments. This dataset consists of a mixture of specific product and industry Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and generic data (for use when EPDs are not available).
The database also has tables of end-of-life data that help standardise assumptions around end-of-life scenarios such as the percentage of steel that is either landfilled or recycled. These tables, referenced by the above Embodied Carbon Standard for New Zealand Buildings, are live and will be periodically updated as the evidence changes.
The database can be found here
There’s also a comprehensive API for those wanting to link their software to the data. This can be found here.
Please get in contact should you wish to discuss use of the API or any API endpoints that you’d like to see added.
To assist with carrying out large scale embodied carbon assessments of commercial buildings, we have created a comprehensive embodied carbon spreadsheet-based calculator
This is a free resource.
A separate free-to-use spreadsheet is available for embodied carbon assessments of residential buildings. This simple-to-use tool is based on a wide selection of assemblies helpfully pre-calculated for you (courtesy of BRANZ).
HECC is most suited for residential buildings compliant with (at the scale of) NZS3604, i.e. timber-framed standalone, 2 or 3 storey walk-ups and terraces.
This is a free resource.
We have recently updated this tool to include embodied carbon, meaning ECCHO is a one-stop-shop for calculating the full lifecycle emissions of a home.
Annual license fee applies.