COP26 House – Beyond Zero Homes

Construction of the COP26 House in Glasgow city centre has started.

Bringing together a wide range of industry partners, the collaborative group Beyond Zero Homes have designed the COP26 House to demonstrate that very low carbon emissions can be achieved affordably using today’s materials and technologies.

Circular Ecology are delighted to be a partner of the COP26 House project, as a member of Beyond Zero Homes. The key aim for the COP26 House is to truly minimise whole life carbon. To achieve this, the designers are maximising the use of responsibly sourced timber-based materials where they offer naturally low embodied carbon emissions.

The COP26 House utilises timber’s carbon storage properties, known as biogenic carbon or carbon sequestration. The amount of carbon stored in the COP26 House could match or even exceed the upfront carbon emissions at completion of the build. This would mean the project being, at completion, zero carbon or even carbon negative – avoiding the need to offset residual carbon, normally required for the ‘net’ in ‘net zero carbon’.

Carbon emissions could remain zero/negative for many decades or until the house is eventually demolished at the end of its life, and the stored carbon returned to the environment. However, this house is being designed for simple disassembly. At the end of its life, expected to exceed sixty years, the constituent construction products may be easily re-used or recycled. Although this benefit cannot be counted in the house’s whole life cycle carbon results, future re-use and recycling should keep the carbon stored for much longer.

Besides demonstrating what can be achieved using low carbon construction products, Circular Ecology’s whole life carbon measurement of the COP26 House reflects the carbon benefit of lower operational energy emissions and circularity principles including minimising resource consumption, responsible local sourcing, and designing for reuse and recycling.

The whole life carbon measurement of the COP26 House includes both embodied carbon and operational carbon across its whole life cycle. Circular Ecology are using the widely recognised RICS methodology, based on EN 15978:2011, as required by the RIBA and UK Green Building Council for measuring the carbon emissions of buildings.

Standardised whole life and embodied carbon measurement of buildings has been available for over ten years and, in the last few years, organisations like Circular Ecology have seen a rapid increase in interest in embodied carbon from forward thinking projects like the COP26 House. However, much of the construction industry remains relatively unfamiliar with embodied carbon, its importance and how to reduce it. One of the key motivations for all members of Beyond Zero Homes through their involvement with the exemplar COP26 House is to openly share the approach we are taking. By doing so, we hope to draw greater attention to this increasingly important source of carbon emissions and showcase how to take action.

To follow the progress of the COP26 House, please visit Beyond Zero Homes.

If you are interested in measuring and managing the embodied carbon of your construction projects, please don’t hesitate to contact us