How do construction projects measure and report carbon emissions? Across the industry, organizations are being tasked with carbon accounting, whether for corporate sustainability goals or for regulatory reporting requirements. Unfortunately, there isn’t a consistent industry-wide method to measure or report it.
The construction industry is fragmented, and further complicated by a range of subcontractors and small businesses brought into projects for a range of tasks. While some of these construction management (CM), general contractor (GC), and specialty firms have proactively figured out how to measure and report carbon emissions associated with their roles, the vast majority have not.
To that end, a group of GC sustainability leads came together with a vision: Wouldn’t it be nice if GCs and their subs all knew how to account for carbon emissions, and always used the same template? Together with Associated General Contractors of America, they compiled their best carbon accounting practices and created the AGC’s Decarbonization and Carbon Reporting Playbook and AGC Construction Carbon Emissions Calculator, which can be found here. www.agc.org/climate-change-playbook
“We are excited to launch the playbook and establish a common approach to construction project decarbonization,” said Joe Rozza, chief sustainability officer of Ryan Companies, and Myrrh Caplan, vice president of sustainability at Skanska USA. “It is the product of an inspiring collaboration among general contractors and AGC of America and an excellent example of the progress we can make when we all work together to mitigate climate change.”
The playbook provides contractors with tools to communicate effectively with project teams and successfully navigate the complexities of carbon reporting for a project. It describes a process for identifying accountability, what to track and report, and how to do so. The associated spreadsheet simplifies the process to the greatest extent possible, with specific tabs for calculating emissions from activities such as material delivery, dirt excavation, utilities usage, off-road equipment and vehicles, and concrete pumping.
The benefits of this resource are meaningful: to have more complete, accurate accounting of carbon emissions of new construction, major retrofits, and renovations. This accounting data can be reported to credit and certification organizations (such as GRESB or LEED), shared with tenants and investors, and used to measure and report on organizational reduction targets. Use of the playbook and its templates better assures apples-to-apples accounting across the industry.
“Collecting high-quality embodied carbon data is an extremely time-consuming process and rarely leads to results that we can use for apples-to-apples analysis across projects. We welcome any tool that can make this process easier and help the industry achieve the embodied carbon reductions we know are so critical to keeping us on a 1.5-degree pathway,” said Natalie Teear, senior vice president of innovation, sustainability and social impact at Hudson Pacific Properties.
ULI’s Randall Lewis Center has been hosting stakeholder convenings to bring together different perspectives across the real estate value chain to overcome disconnects in advancing decarbonization, including the developer/GC divide. It could be tremendously helpful for developers to work with GCs and CMs who are smart on carbon accounting.
“At AvalonBay, we’ve been working to reduce embodied carbon in our development projects in alignment with our GHG reduction targets for years. We’ve experienced firsthand how a lack of understanding and inconsistent processes can create confusion and hinder reduction progress. This new resource from AGC is a significant step forward in advancing education about carbon accounting and building alignment on the means and methods for tracking embodied carbon on job sites. By establishing a consistent reporting method, we can improve the accuracy of carbon data, operationalize the reductions more effectively, and improve collaboration between contractors and developers,” said Katie Rothenberg, vice president of ESG at AvalonBay Communities.
Developers can make use of this new resource by listing the AGC Construction Decarbonization Playbook as the guidance and templates they want used in RFQ, RFP, LOI, and so forth, and in the contract with their CM/GC. This carbon accounting guidance applies throughout construction, from early research of design and construction options, continuing on to the operations phase. Developers can also flag early analytics to understand viability (for example, whether electrified construction equipment is available for the scope of work, or if there are opportunities for circularity).
As industry expectations continue to rise around carbon accounting, reporting, and reductions, the AGC playbook will be a great way to bring stakeholders together around a common practice and template.
