Modelling the embodied carbon cost of UK domestic building construction: Today to 2050

Michał P. Drewniok, Cyrille F. Dunant, Julian M. Allwood, Tim Ibell and Will Hawkins

Ecological Economics, 2023, vol. 205, issue C

Abstract: The construction of new domestic properties contributes 2% of UK territorial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The UK government aims to increase construction of new homes in England by almost a third, to 300,000 per year by the mid-2020s, whilst simultaneously reducing emissions in line with its net zero 2050 commitment. In this paper, for the first time, the upfront embodied carbon cost of constructing domestic properties in the UK by 2050 is quantified. A bottom-up analysis modelling seven domestic building typologies was used, with the material use for each based on current UK practice. Possible interventions to reduce the embodied carbon cost are then analysed. The results show that maintaining today’s levels of construction will use the remaining 2050 carbon budget apportioned to house building (160 MtCO2e) by 2036, and cause a substantial increase in domestic floor area per capita. However, construction could reduce and cease entirely by 2035 without reducing today’s living floor area per capita (37.5 m2), resulting in a substantially reduced cumulative embodied carbon of 88 MtCO2e by 2050. Increasing living floor area per capita to the EU average of 40.5 m2, can be achieved within the carbon budget and with zero emissions by 2050. In contrast, increasing house building to government targets will result in double the cumulative emissions than the budget allows.

Keywords: Embodied carbon cost; Embodied carbon budget; UK domestic building stock; Mitigation strategies; Building materials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092200386X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:205:y:2023:i:c:s092180092200386x

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107725

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().