Decarbonising the UK's construction industry

One Click LCA Planetary launches in the UK

Embodied carbon in the construction industry is responsible for 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Launching today in the United Kingdom, One Click LCA Planetary is a free-to-use embodied carbon tool, which aims to decarbonise the construction sector. It is developed by One Click LCA Ltd and its UK launch is supported by the UK Green Building Council.

15 July 2020, Helsinki, Finland

One Click LCA Planetary, the first free global platform to help designers, builders, investors and regulators to assess, report and reduce the embodied carbon impacts of their buildings, launches today in the UK.

Developed by One Click LCA Ltd (formerly known as Bionova Ltd), specialists in construction carbon, One Click LCA Planetary was introduced in May 2020 with a network of partners from 16 countries in all continents. The network has been continuously growing since then and now consists of 22 partners in 19 countries and today the tool launches in the UK. It is a planetary solution: available in nine languages, with a global database covering 60+ countries, making it suitable for international investors and organisations.

Embodied carbon refers to the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the extraction, manufacture, transportation, use and disposal of a material or product. According to the UN Environment Programme, embodied carbon in the construction sector will be responsible for almost half of total new construction emissions between now and 2050.

One Click LCA Planetary is a free tool, which aims to make it easier to design, develop, and deliver low carbon buildings. Designers and builders can calculate the embodied carbon of their projects, choose sustainable materials, and request environmental performance of products directly from manufacturers. It also supports the benchmarking of cradle-to-gate embodied carbon impacts and materials efficiency for key materials categories.

One Click LCA Planetary includes a global generic impact database as well as a constantly updated database of verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) of manufacturer-specific environmental impacts data.

Assessing and declaring the environmental footprint of construction materials and products is not straightforward. One Click LCA offers manufacturers a faster, more cost-effective solution to generate EPDs for their products. Helping them to showcase their product’s sustainability.

“By making product and material analysis freely available, the new Planetary embodied carbon tool will make embodied carbon more accessible to a wider audience and enable better decision making on all projects.”
Julie Hirigoyen, Chief Executive, UKGBC

“We launched One Click LCA Planetary to make low carbon buildings the global standard,” said Panu Pasanen, CEO of One Click LCA Ltd. “We’re extremely pleased to be working with partners like the UKGBC who share our vision to accelerate this, and we welcome others to join us on this journey to zero.”

Julie Hirigoyen, Chief Executive, UKGBC, said: “If we’re going to limit global temperature rises to just 1.5 degrees we need to achieve a net zero carbon built environment by 2050 at the latest. This will mean addressing all impacts associated with buildings and infrastructure, but the embodied carbon in products and materials is often overlooked by developers, designers and policy-makers. With less than thirty years left to decarbonise our buildings, there is now a growing urgency to tackle these impacts head-on.”

She added: “The first step in minimising the whole life carbon impacts of a building is making informed decisions at the early design stage. By making product and material analysis freely available, the new Planetary embodied carbon tool will make embodied carbon more accessible to a wider audience and enable better decision making on all projects. It is only by bringing the entire industry with us that we can achieve the scale of change that we need over the next thirty years.”

Pat Barry, CEO of Irish Green Building Council, said: “We are delighted to support One Click LCA Planetary in this incredible initiative, as this removes the last barriers to building professionals and procurers getting started on measuring the embodied impacts of construction. Not only does it provide a high quality free tool but it is continually updated with the latest data from local EPD programmes. The excuses that there was no data, no tools or that it was too complicated no longer apply. Procurers, Architects, Surveyors  and Engineers can immediately get started optimising and reducing upfront carbon at the design stage.”

The One Click LCA Planetary network of partners consists of the International Living Future Institute, One Planet Network, the Green Building Councils of Ireland, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Chile, Hungary, Finland, Jordan, Emirates, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, as well as other industry bodies and architect’s councils.

According to data from the UKGBC, around 22% of UK carbon emissions come from the operational and embodied carbon of the built environment. One Click LCA Planetary aims to address this by powering embodied carbon and materials efficiency at a policy, procurement and individual project level.

More information

• Read more about One Click LCA Planetary’s features, its countries of availability, and create a free account today at: www.oneclicklca.com/planetary
• You can also find out how Planetary can help implement 9 city-level embodied carbon policies.
• One Click LCA is running a free Introduction to Planetary webinar on Wednesday 29th July at 2pm BST. Places are limited so register today.

Contact

Panu Pasanen, Chief Executive Officer
+358 442871 722, panu.pasanen@oneclicklca.com

Om One Click LCA

One Click LCA Ltd (formerly known as Bionova Ltd) is the developer of One Click LCA, the world-leading construction sector life-cycle assessment software. One Click LCA is used to decarbonize building and infrastructure projects, to create Environmental Product Declarations and to design low-carbon products and to manage and create corporate or real estate portfolio greenhouse gas reports. It is used in more than 70 countries, includes the world’s largest construction sector database, integrates with over a dozen design tools and supports over 40 standards and certifications. For more information: www.oneclicklca.com

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