Carbon Expert of the Month, March 2021

What led you to become a construction carbon expert?

Back in 2012, having just graduated with a Master’s degree in Architecture and Engineering, I knew my passion lay within reducing the environmental footprint of the buildings we designed as architects. A few years ago, sustainability was not a widespread term, but it was definitely one that fascinated me. I decided to pursue a second Master’s degree in Sustainable Building Design at the Technical University of Munich, where I first learned how to undertake embodied carbon assessments and the importance of considering the whole life-cycle emissions of materials, products and buildings.

When I joined Ramboll, I became part of a global network of multidisciplinary LCA experts, focusing on the collective mitigation of operational and embodied carbon emissions. I have been leading some of our global LCA initiatives and I am really pleased to see the industry’s increased focus on this topic.

What kind of projects do you typically work on, and in what role?

As part of Ramboll’s Sustainable Solutions team, I am responsible for our Life Cycle Assessment services. In the past few months, my main focus has been supporting our clients with establishing appropriate goals and targets, helping them understand the whole life-cycle emissions of their projects, as well as identifying carbon intensive elements and developing appropriate strategies to mitigate their impact. I have completed Whole Life Carbon (WLC) assessments for a variety of project types, including residential, office and retail buildings, as well as warehouses.

A key part of my role is also to support Ramboll’s national and global LCA research activities, which range from developing LCA and embodied carbon guidance documents to creating databases that include Ramboll’s national and international projects. This can help inform the development of realistic carbon targets for our clients and establish appropriate benchmarks.

How do you see carbon performance evolving in the market?

Over the last few years, we have been seeing an increased interest from our clients in understanding the embodied carbon impact of their projects and in exploring ways to reduce carbon emissions. Some of our most progressive clients have been setting their own challenging targets and goals and it has been great assisting them on their sustainability journey.

There is no doubt that whole life-cycle environmental performance will become a top priority and I expect more policies to be put in place to regulate embodied carbon emissions and introduce requirements to undertake whole life-cycle assessments and reduce embodied carbon. There will be an increased pressure on manufacturers to measure and disclose the environmental performance of their products, for example by producing EPDs. This will definitely encourage them to find ways to reduce their manufacturing process and supply chain emissions, if they wish to stay competitive in a market with a constantly increasing focus on sustainability.

In the past few months, I have been part of a project team working on a pilot study to define a Net Zero Carbon pathway for refurbishing existing office buildings. This is a relatively unexplored field and a challenging and exciting project to be involved with. I have been leading the embodied carbon workstream and have been closely working with our sustainability, energy and building services experts to identify and assess appropriate options to achieve Net Zero Carbon from both an operational and embodied perspective.

Europe is faced with an ageing existing building stock. The sustainable use and refurbishment of existing buildings, if and where possible, will play a key role in reducing upfront embodied carbon emissions. I am excited to explore how various refurbishment solutions perform when integrating the life-cycle perspective.