Embodied carbon management for global infrastructure

The COP27 has been a grim reminder for all nations' concerted efforts in the current decade for reducing the carbon emissions and keeping the global temperature increase below 1.5 degree Celsius. With climate change becoming a pervasive issue, infrastructure development also has its fair share to resolve when it comes to carbon emissions from capital projects. With the burgeoning global infrastructure spending, focused and impending actions are warranted from the construction industry. In the quest to build rapid infrastructure for global growth, we cannot not miss the carbon implications it brings, in the form of embodied and operational carbon emissions. Today, the global construction industry accounts for a greater share of embodied carbon as compared to the overall transportation sector. In the coming few years, construction sector growth is also expected to surpass that of manufacturing sector by contributing to almost one-third of global GDP.

At such a scale, addressing embodied carbon becomes existential for the infrastructure sector and its stakeholders including the feeding industries such as steel, cement, aluminum, and others. Project developers and asset owners embarking on their decarbonisation and/or net zero journeys should consider emissions generated from embodied carbon while finalising design and procurement decisions.

This thought leadership highlights the contribution of embodied carbon in the rise of global warming and existing solutions to reduce embodied carbon. It also highlights the ideal space across the industry currently available for innovative solutions to address the major contributors of the embodied carbon emissions.