NACF launches Embodied Carbon Benchmarking tool to help speed up change in reducing emissions

We are delighted to formally announce the NACF Embodied Carbon Benchmarking initiative, a pathfinder project that will enable evidence to be compiled that supports the sharing of best practice and learning on embodied carbon emissions on public sector building projects.  As pressure grows to tackle embodied carbon emissions in a way that makes large scale and speedy changes to more sustainable construction, we are building an accessible dataset of project embodied carbon emissions that can be used to identify approaches that reduce embodied carbon quickly and effectively.

We all know that reducing embodied carbon is an intrinsic part of the journey to net zero with embodied carbon emissions accounting for 12% of UK greenhouse gas emissions.   Just this month, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Timber Industries released a report which called for an expansion to the Building Regulations to include requirements to assess, report and reduce embodied carbon and setting limit values on embodied carbon emissions for all developments.

The industry is looking for support and fast – time is of the essence and we need to see what good looks like now so that we can accelerate towards lower carbon projects as soon as possible.

With active connections to the Governments Infrastructure and Projects Authority, The NACF database is designed as a forerunner and ultimately a contributor to the Bulit Environment Carbon Database (BECD), which is still under development.  The NACF tool is available now for those project teams motivated to start taking rapid action.

The NACF database is available to building projects being delivered through NACF frameworks.  We welcome all contractors and framework operators to the initiative which are delivering public sector construction projects covering both new build and retrofit/refurbishment activity.