Webinar on Counting Carbon

Housekeeping

Good morning, everybody. I'm today's technical host. My voice is a bit croaky, I apologize. So you will be glad to hear I'm not giving the presentation today, my voice might give out on me.

Before we start, I just need to go through a little bit of housekeeping with you all. Just to make you aware of the platform using today. First of all want to make sure you can hear me okay. The way you do that, look at the top of the screen. Can you please all click on the icon. And that tells me you can hear me. Look at that. That's fantastic. This webinar is being recorded, and will be available via the Historic England website.

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Introduction from Morwenna Slade Historic England

That said, I'm going to introduce our first speaker accredited charter building fair with a background of managing maintenance, repair and renovation projects across a range of historic estates and buildings. My team is multidisciplinary, and we concentrate on the maintenance and adaptation of historic buildings, directly in response to the climate crisis.

I am really pleased to bring you the second in our series focusing on embodied carbon. It's a subject that seems to have gone from obscurity to being front page news this year, so it's a great time to explore the broader context, it's important, and what we need to do next. This series of webinars we're inviting experts to share their knowledge of embodied carbon and related topics, and to try and add to discussion how we can work more effectively to make the most of our existing built environment, and also to better understand our choice around construction materials and how we can encourage others we work with to do the same.

I don't know about you, but I find the range of information on this subject just hard to navigate. There is a huge sort of gap in some of the information we need. And also a wealth of work of emerging research, and new and existing processes and standards, that we are trying to have to work in our daily practices, and it can make practical decision making on the ground really challenging. I hope through the series we develop a greater understanding along with providing some of the up to date resources. And please do ask your questions. more importantly, really put in the chat if you have any things that you really want us to cover in other webinars, because we're really open to identifying that this is an emerging subject would need to learn more about.

So today with me I have Dr. Alice Moncaster senior lecturer, Lecturer in engineering at the Open University and analysis and evaluation at Historic England. First up is Alice. She's a civil engineer and a structural engineer, and who worked in industry for 10 years, designing, infrastructure e and buildings as part of a multidisciplinary team. This gave her invaluable understanding of how things get built in practice. and this remains a strong influence in her research. Before joining the Open University, Alice directed the sustainability leadership for the built environment Master's course at the University of Cambridge, where she's still a visiting fellow. Her research focuses primarily on the environmental sustainability, and in particular the rapid reduction in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment. With that will pass it over to Alice. 

Speaker: Alice Moncaster

Thank you very much. As said, I'm Alice, I'm a senior lecturer and sustainable built environment working at the Open University and I'm so pleased to have been invited here today as part of this technical Tuesday event. I'm going to talk not really just about embodied carbon I'm going to talk in three sections. Firstly, setting the scene with the greenhouse gas emissions globally then talking about lifecycle assessment as applied to the built environment And finally moving on to the circular economy, as I said before moving over to the circular economy.

I too have a croaky voice like Matt apologize for that. So first set the scene for terms of global greenhouse gas emission. And a lot of numbers about, and hard to know what they refer to.

Sadly as we know in 2021, postpandemic, global emissions rose to their highest levels ever and there is several figures I'm going to discuss here. First off the global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) rose to 36.3 billion tonnes = This is a really important fishing, because almost all emissions from the built environment are CO2. However all energy related greenhouse gases include a bit of methane as well, and those rose to (GHG) rose to 40.8 Gt CO2e.

When we talk about all greenhouse gases we convert them to equivalent amount of CO2. And that's why we talk to CO2e, CO2 equivalent.

And finally, greenhouse gases that include human activities like agriculture and cattle and milking and all the other things that we know are bad and produce methane, and rose to 52GT CO2e.

And so I'm going to bring up this slide again in and tell you the answers, and wonder if anyone knows what the carbon footprint of average person living in each of the regions. In tonnes per person per year. Just carbon. So I've chosen Europe in the United States. as two sort of major developed regions and China and India as obviously to huge populations, which are often slated for increasing their carbon emissions, at the moment. And a link here. Don't sneak a look, just see if you can tell. So moving on from that. What share of energy related CO2 emissions are building responsible for.

So as said, almost all the emissions due to buildings are carbon dioxide, and they're mostly from the use of energy in one form or another. So therefore we often talk about buildings emissions in terms of proportion of the first figure I showed you, energy related carbon dioxide emissions. and these are figures from the global status report 2021. So again link you can look up.

Latest calculations suggest that globally 37% of these global emissions are due to the built environment. And that is made up of operational carbon from heating and cooling and lighting, that is 27%, and embodied carbon from the materials which is 10%. So the global total annual carbon emissions is then this 37% of that first number I showed you, making 13.4GT of CO2. Excuse me. And so I think it's really important to explain that this doesn't mean that the operational carbon of one house is 2.7 times it's embodied carbon, rather it means embodied carbon emission -- sorry, that means the carbon emissions and heating and lighting all existing buildings is 27% of global emissions. And carbon emissions of new buildings is 10% of global emissions.

Of course far fewer new buildings being erected compared to existing buildings, so you see embodied carbon is actually a really important issue. And of course we have known about the operational energy for a long time, and that's the energy used in heating and cooling and lighting building and is this has been regulated.

This has been regulated for many years across Europe. In Europe governed by the energy performance building directive in effect 2006 originally drafted 2002. Over 15 years been reducing operational carbon emissions of built environment in theory. In theory should address that 27% of operational emissions due to heating and cooling and lighting new buildings, sorry addresses 27% but only apply to new buildings, and so that's energy per swear meter required to be lower than previously, but as construction continues with number of people and area of building per person increasing across the globe the operational energy has actually increased and also excludes operation of energy and carbon on existing buildings. And excludes the embodied energy carbon in construction of new buildings, so hasn't addressed major impacts. So going back to my question. I don't know if anyone tried to answer it. So China has only relatively recently over taken Europe in CO2 emissions per person. These are 2019 figures. Because 2020 was a blip and 2021 aren't available yet. 8.1 tonnes of CO2 per person. And Europe 6.6. Which is decreasing at the moment, and India, with China slated for having huge new amounts of emissions is now only up to 1.9 tonnes per person so far.

And US shockingly, the tonnes per person is 15.3. So you see almost twice that of China. And of course, many developing countries are much lower than India. And so added another example this is Chad in central Africa. With a carbon per capita 0.05 tons CO2 per year.

And carbon footprint of American is 300 people living in Chad. And of course these are average carbon footprints in each country and the difference between the carbon footprint to the very rich and the very poor is far greater even than the difference between Chad and the US.

So, a quick follow up question, in order to limit global warming to one and a half degrees. What do you think we need our average carbon footprint to be by 2030. I think this is going to be a little quiz. If that's right. Thank you, Matt is doing the quizzes. Thank you very much. So I'll just wait for a few more answers to come. Actually, you're not wrong, you're not far off. Most people are about right. If I can... I don't know if I can end the poll, or if you have to end the poll. I can end the poll, there we go. The answer is 2.3 tonnes per person.

So India is still below this target 1.9. And Chad and other countries have a long way to go there. And most of us are far above it and really need to reduce our emissions. How does this all fit into using life cycle assessments for buildings and what is the relationship, so life cycle assessment has been around as a methodology since the 70's, way of calculating whole life environment impacts of particular product or process. And since the 90s looked at whole buildings, and certainly environment impacts of construction materials, for example the BRE green guide used at LCA. And used much more effectively since European standards published 2011 and 2012 originally. And these defined a very specific framework and the two we look at in the UK, are these well across Europe indeed.

So these are BS EN published by the British Standards Institute in the UK, and EN is for European norm. for that tells us how to develop an environmental declaration. and EPD for a construction products or material and en 50 978, which looks at how to assess the whole life environmental performance of the whole building, which is obviously a bit more complex than just a product.

I just wanted to make an important point that although I'm focusing on just greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, and mostly carbon dioxide. These require calculation of whole range of different environment indicators not just global warming potential, not just what they call carbon. But we're mainly looking at carbon. 2017 this happened Simon Sturgis let a team of people including me, developing a methodology for use during the design stage just for carbon emissions based on EN5978. And published in. RICS in 2017. and is currently in the process of being updated so that's kind of a usable guide to using the standard, if you'd like.

So this is the process based lifecycle assessment building lifecycle. Which is in 15978, and there are difference ways of doing life cycle assessment. This is made up of stages A1-3, the product stage, which is everything involved in the manufacturer product and is materials up to factory gates and often called cradle to gate. And cradle to gate emissions are many majority of embodied carbon emissions but not all of them. And then transport to site. And construction on site. So together A1-3 and 4-5, to end of construction, and big stage B divided into chunks. and this is all the emissions during the life of the building.

So be one to five of those embodied emissions from materials so that repair and maintenance and refurbishment and replacement, B16 operational energy and carbon of heating and cooling. And B7. So those are the operational emissions. Just those two little purple bits, and you get the end of life stages, and that's demolition and waste and processing.

And then this stage D. Stage D is beyond the end of life. It's sort of carbon positive activity such as recycling materials, I'll come back to that later. Importantly the standard says not to report this combined with A-C stages. Always report it separately. Don't roll it up into one number. So another little quiz for you. Having seen that embodied carbon emissions that is all the A stage, B1-5 and C1-4.

What do you think is the embodied carbon emissions in new UK home of tonnes of CO2. Is this going to be a quiz too Matt? Thank you. Yeah, I think you can... I think you can put in more than one number here. I'll come back to it later. I'll just move over. I don't know if I can move that quiz out of the way. Thank you.

So this was a first analysis of a whole life carbon domestic building in the UK that I did with Katy Simons back in 2013 as part of my first project, with embodied carbon created a tool BLP insurance tool butterfly. But there isn't really great deal of good data about whole life carbon impacts, and much is based on like this one off case study of individual building.

This was actually a model of a building, not a real building, but developed a very careful tool that calculated all the stages, and found for UK standard home built with regs at the time. So all the green bright green bars above the 0 line, above the axis, 891 kilograms of CO2E per metre squared. And about half of the operation the carbon emissions assume 60 year life of building. That's one answer.

I know how the figure comes from and how they're calculated. But still based on one calculation, building type, with one set of model boundaries and assumptions. So since there there have been absolutely loads of publications. Academic publications on embodied carbon, and this is very simplistic assessment, and  simplistic survey, I wouldn't believe the numbers too much. But certainly by 2021. More than double the papers published on embodied carbon buildings, but having the huge number of data doesn't really make it any easier to work out what the answer is.

So in 2011 to 2016 this happened. International energy agency annex 57. There was 25 of us from 15 countries. and as the UK expert on this, and that's me with my sub task group on the right of subtasks for, and we collected at case studies of individual buildings, and these were detailed complex case studies. Very academically thorough if you like. And first thing we tried to do with them is work out what was comparable between them, and where the raw data came from, and it was rather difficult. This is one graph of our results. These are some of those case study results and these are the ones that calculated the product stage A1-3. And see here the dark replacement in orange, and see the shading. If the shading.
Because the suit was different for different case studies which is kind of a trick. Because obviously most of the emissions are not spread out over the lifetime of the emission. Most is A-1-3 stage before it's built.

A number of the case studies were not newbuild, but retrofit of existing buildings up to equivalent energy standards. So deep retrofit. So what we found, these are the average figures. A-1 to newbuild. around 260 kilograms of co2 e per meter squared was for the roof retrofits, they were around 150 So only just over half for retrofitting. So basically what these showed retrofitting to the same operational energy standard ises only about half the carbon emissions of newbuild. So what does this mean in the UK.

In the UK government is always setting out targets to building new homes, this is showing the quarterly started and completed new dwellings in England, since 2006. 2006. And if you look at the blue line on the right, it shows where 50,000 New build dwellings, completed in the first quarter of 2021, so. Multiply by four to get annual figure, that might be higher than it actually was, I don't know, we might have built 200,000 new homes in 2021.

So what was the carbon impact of this. If we take that figure from the A1-3 average stage from the annex 57 results and we multiply it up by assuming a sort of fairly standard 100 meters squared home, and then multiplied by 200,000 times that's 5.2 megatons of co2 equivalent. which again is a number hard to imagine. So I turned this into carbon emissions for 28,000 people if they only spent 2.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year. it would be their lifetime carbon emissions, but 28,000 people and this is just in one year. So it's really huge. And if we add Lifetime embodied carbon of the buildings it's about 500 kilograms of CO2E per metre squared, so about 10 megatons of CO2 equivalent. So, the answer the quiz, what is the embodied carbon emissions, a new UK Home.

It is somewhere around 30 to 60 tons, So it's not nothing. One person would be spending 13-26 years worth of their allowance of carbon emissions on building a new house, without having anything left to heat the house or eating food or travelling or buying stuff or activities that have high carbon impact. So how does this relate to the circular economy? We will talk more about this, in more expertise. There are three general principles of circular economy. Closing material loops, the recycling products at end of life and returning into new product, and also narrowing material flows. Reducing amount in the first place, and keeping the material in use, so extending the life products. So that building a linear process, in the slide along the bottom. You can imagine that linear process turning into a circular process, like this. Turn it into a circle. So if can you recycle all the components and materials in the house, in stage D, and turn them into a new house, this would be a complete circle and you wouldn't have those two horizontal lines on the left, but of course that's not true. Of course you actually stage C demolition, whole load of those materials still going off to landfill or energy from waste And you can see that's the bottom arrow pointing off to the left, and therefore for a new building who have masses of new materials coming in this stage. And that stage D the recycling icon on the left, that's small amount of materials that can be recycled. anyway is concrete that's crushed up and be used as aggregate.

So not very much at all. So I don't really like that depiction of a building as a circular process because it suggests that it might be much more circular than it really is. I think the reality is much more like this. This is a diagram colleagues and I developed. It's called circularity of built environment. a call for a paradigm shift in Handbook of the circular economy by elkaar publishers. So, do please ask if you'd like a copy of this.

What this shows is the first circle is the first building. Once materials leave the building, they are very much smaller and the diminishing size of the circle shows the diminishing technical value, and the diminishing amount of materials you can reuse. So we argue truly circular building can't be achieved through collection of even zero carbon buildings.

This is another way of showing another aspect of circular economy. The one about extending building lifetimes and produced by my PhD student at Cambridge and published in energy policy. And looks at impact of extending building lifetimes and focused on urban residential buildings in China. So you might note that in China, hugely rapidly developing an urban buildings have been demolished really quickly, calculated the average age of urban residential buildings at demolition, is just 34 years at the moment.

So this shows the embodied energy, rather than carbon of reach year up to 2060 in China. And ignore the potential errors on this. Just focus on the 3 lines in the middle. The blue line is business as usual. This is happening in China at the moment, and it shows how much embodied energy would be spent on building buildings if they go on as they are predicted to at the moment, and green line below that is very cautious and conservative estimate that Wei made that by 2040 buildings would have a lifetime extended by 10 years.

So 2040 the average building lifetime is 44. Still really, really young. So really accurate, and could decide to do as a policy, and this shows that, that, that green line the distance between the green line and the blue line is about 20%, by 2040 So you're saving 20% of your embodied energy just by extending the building lifetime by a really small amount. so another graph that we can look at yet another issue of the circular economy is the use of lower carbon materials. And so here I'm looking at not the average, but the range.

For newbuild the range of those bars is between.25 and 16.24 kilograms of CO2E per metre squared per year. If the 2.432 8.02 So these aren't taught the same building, but it is showing that the choice of materials can make a huge difference. so those 3 principles of circular economy I tried to look at the last 3 slides applied to buildings. Applied to buildings, the first is what most people think about, and it's really recyclealing and resuesing materials, and second and third is likely to have much more effect on reducing carbon emission and is raw material used, and second material use achieved by minimizing the new buildings we construct, and also choosing the lowest carbon materials possible for each building, that can make a huge difference, and third keeping products in use, is about extending life times, and as shown in Wei's model in China. That can make a huge impact and retaining buildings whenever possible as well. Not demolishing them. So I just think it's really important to stress that the circular economy for buildings buildings is not just that stage D in the life cycle assessment. So in conclusion, first we need to rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

So we need to reduce both operational and embodied impacts and to do this we need to retrofit existing buildings not build new ones wherever possible. . Despite the limitations, lifecycle assessment, it's a really useful approach so we need regulation for a lifecycle assessment.

And we need to make the lowest carbon choices in every project, and life cycle assessment can help us do that. whatever we're doing, we should choose the Lowest carbon materials possible. and I was really pleased to see that the recent report from the Environmental Audit Committee this which came out last month, impact, and it's a report on their inquiry into sustainability in the built environment came to almost exactly the same Conclusion. If They recommended a number of actions but chief amongst them where they need to measure embodied impact through LTP and we should use the RICS guide for doing that. We should prioritize retrofit wherever possible, and we should use low carbon materials. and they actually had quite a big sort of push for timber. In fact, which was nice and surprising. Thank you very much, that's all I have to say except a final word about circular economy, I'm concerned can be used as quite reductive idea, and really pleased to have expert talk about potential of the circular economy to move us out of our existing paradigm and into something completely new. thank you very much >> Thank you so much Alice. Really fascinating to see the graphs, and rather pleased with the graph that showed the amount of increase of reading material in the last few years, and makes me feel like less I'm swamped, and there is awful lot going on in the area.

Introduction to Adela Leeson, Historic England

And we'll move on to Adala, as I said, head of socio economic analysis and evaluation Historic England. She leads socio and economic research, and the production of heritage counts clinches the annual audit of Historic Environment. She's a member of the DCMS culture inherited capital steering and working groups at the climate heritage network. Before joining Historic England, worked as an associate economic consultant advising public and private clients on economic development and regeneration programmes >> Thank you so much Alice. Really fascinating to see the graphs, and rather pleased with the graph that showed the amount of increase of reading material in the last few years, and makes me feel like less I'm swamped, and there is awful lot going on in the area. And we'll move on to Adala, as I said, head of socio also in academia. Over to you, and really keen to what you have to say.

Adala's presentation

 Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you so much for that introduction Alice.

I'm probably going to take it into a little bit different direction. But I think evidence and data that Alice was showing and sharing, that is extremely critical to how we move forward. With a lot of the work we need where we know we need to address climate change, and we know we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, amongst others.

I think the really critical thing is to have those measurements and have that data there. In order to understand the scale and And that's kind of what I'm going to talk about with have much economic perspective, that is my area of expertise, and also very much working within the historic environment, and thinking a little bit about the political economy.

And just, for introduction, there is some key messages here, which is heritage has a broad range of values, including environmental value as Alice very clearly demonstrated in the embodied carbon discussion. But these values are very often excluded from the economic models, and therefore are excluded from many of the decisions that shape our live shape and the economies and carbon emissions we emit.

So this is perspective, really about heritage, policy, economics and thinking about measurement and value. So, just some very quick economics 101. In what we call neo-classical economics a good or service is said to have economic value if it satisfies individual preferences, so we argue, of course heritage has economic value, because people visit heritage, and people invest time in heritage, and people invest money in heritage, and people buy historic buildings, heritage has economic value, we covered that one off. And then one of the critical things here is about what economics is about. It's often about allocating funding, and in the UK we have treasury, that have their green book that gives us this guidance on how do we think about value and how do we measure cost? And these things really matter, because they really ultimately provide an evidence-base on which decisions are made about where to allocate our very finite resources. And value and cost are the key things here. And these things are most often -- not always -- but most often measured in monetary terms so in pound signs, so it's really important.

I know I worked in the heritage sector in quite an niche area, and people don't necessarily like the idea of using a pound sign to talk about the historic environment, but this is a language that people businesses and government know, and use it. And when we really demonstrate to it from historic environment perspective we are on the back foot. And wanted to very quickly contextualize the issues that I deal with within the heritage sector, so a big part of this and the reason we need the data and information is we often are asked to make business cases, you know, "why should we invest in heritage?".

And one of the real issues is big chunk of value heritage, what people say matters and heritage sector says is important is not included in the discussions. They're outside. They're seen as externalities. And any economics textbook emissions are given as very clear example of an externality.

So in general, say I have a building here I designed myself, which is this kind of wonderful thing. And we say, okay, we need to make a business case to build this property, and say this within the heritage sector, and previously working in economic development regenerations and look at floor space and land values and how much training and volunteering will be provided and look at land use and visits and then calculate this is a great thing to invest. It creates wonderful net new jobs, and gives incomes and GVA, and GDP very important metrics in economics. But this is often the way I would present a business case, given the tools and data I have today. But, often what I'm talking about is not that ugly kind of faceless building, but actually something like this. And this asset has something beyond the floor space land values, etcetera.

It's something about historic value, and architectural aesthetic, spiritual, and really embodied carbon argument plays out here. And often other people working in the area can't tell you what the quantification, and can't include it -- to some extent non-monetized value which is thing we do.

But this is really something we're trying to address, and working hard with the department for culture, media and sport. Digital culture media and sport to develop a new concept we call the 'culture and heritage capital approach' to really trying to break our silence in the things we in the heritage sector think is important, and going to focus on embodied carbon in the context again of economics, and these are kind of my main takeaways from the section, economics is a powerful tool, and continually evolving, circular economics is one of several approaches that we can start to use as wonderful people like Alice start to quantify these things, we can start to apply them in the example, talking about the business case.

So this is just a little timeline showing the kind of where economics is coming from. And dates back to 1776 when Adam Smith came up with the wealth of nations and talked about invisible hand. If we have competitive market, we will reach equalibrium where demand and supply are balanced, and market prices will reflect this balance, no need for government intervention because markets will clear the right place.

Over time though as we developed moved from this idea as our society context changes, and economic theories change and move from classical to neo-classical. And currently not clear-cut, in the place with neo-liberal economics about free market and is deregulation and letting the market clear.

The point I'm going to say here, and really want, is that many of the economists you see here, there are others, have been hugely influential in the policies we have pursued or haven't pursued, and that's affected all our lives. It affects political social environmental outcomes and economics influences how we think of built environment, and including the historic built environment, and this is the really critical thing, I don't know if you can see it very well, but a measure of GDP, and it looks from 1940 to 2018. And you can see this huge amount of growth, and the different colours of different regions, and looking how different areas continue to grow. And we've seen a huge growth in wonderful metric we use called gross domestic product, and it's used often to say how well we're doing. How well our economies are doing, and it's used as measure of prosperity and success. Actually if you go back to the roots of the concept, it was never meant to be a measure of success. It was just about monetizizing the value of goods and services produced in an economy. And over specific period of time. But we started a real -- this number has a real big impact on what we do and what our economic policies look like. Just yesterday looking at news with big political event, and statements about the success of current government based on review of GDP comparing UKGDP to GDP elsewhere.

It's a really powerful metric, but it's very best is incomplete. And our relentless drive to maximize GDP is increasingly showing signs of weakness, and has some real negative impacts, so we have GDP growing and growing, but so too are the key metrics here I'll talk about more on the CO2. Which is inequalities, that we're seeing, rich and poor, really separating out. This is changed since 1979, you really see the neo-liberal economics on the very top there, increasing wealth and increasing incomes.

So growing wellbeing inequalities. And starting to fuel call for change. Equally our carbon dioxide emissions again since 2019. And seem to keep growing and growing, and real concern this economic system is driving these very negative effects, and we need to do something to change. So really strong and growing voice of economist saying, we need change. We need a paradigm shift, something to move on from. This is where measurement is really important.

So is GDP a measure of success. Many people would argue not. If we're measuring the wrong thing by that metric, will often result in inefficient outcomes. So economics is really powerful tool. But at best incomplete and evolving science, so we're in place we're saying hang on what is next. And really interesting writing that people talk about ecological economics, well-being economics and here comes circular economics. So, just kind of going into a little bit of detail around this. One thing to note circular economics fits quite neatly into our current economic narrative.

But it's really important, because, in some of the ideas around the circular economy can be really useful for us to make that case for the built historic environment, and there is a question, is it enough?So there's no single definition of what we mean by the circular economy. If you read the literature, because there is a lot of variation, and often doesn't actually come from economics comes more from a business perspective, But what it tends to involve is reduce demand for natural resource and is materials did he arrived from them. And often characterized by increased Product repair. removing increased material recycling more robust long, longer lived products.

More reuse and repair, and modifying consumer behavior. So in many ways, this is really music to my ears as someone working in the historic environment, because this is what essentially we have been talking about and CHAFRN I don't knowing in the heritage sector is the idea of conservation. And conservation within the built historic environment. And I think where the circular economy comes really useful is because they're talking about resource, and how we use resources, and actually -- it's very difficult to quantify that, again, measurement being really important.

But in 2017, the united nations environment programme projected that total resource use, if we continue in the same line we are at the moment, we can expect it to more than double by 2050. And we know we're working in a world of finite resources and know global population, will grow from 7 billion to 9 billion, in 2050. This is not sustainable. So how does this idea of circular economy work for heritage? And how can it really help us make that case? So what it is, is it's about measuring more holistically. There are real opportunities within the concept to measure more holistically to avoid carbon in the way that Alice has very nicely presented lots of data on.

And every kind of carbon counts wherever it is emitted. But in practice, it is really difficult to link this theory to actual practice. Particularly when we continue to have targets and carbon budgets based for example, territorial and emissions. Which is the emissions that we produce in this country. Has nothing to do with the products we are buying into this country, and we know, we got fast construction, and all these things, and a lot of material coming into our service economy that is being produced elsewhere.

So, really creating those incentives to measure more holistically is really critical and something that the circular approach can provide us with. And I just put this here, because I'm trying to demonstrate that invisible hand, which I don't think it was intended to be in this way. Another key point, as Alice pointed is the life cycle of buildings.

In a circular economy, we can more clearly articulate the importance of the capacity to extend the productive life of resources. We can make a stronger case there is value in the things we the heritage sector have been championing for a long time. Which is that of maintenance, repair, refurbishment. Those things extend the durability of the assets we have today. Those things, are really important, if we are going to reduce our resources.

And of course, in the life cycle is the reuse and recovery recycling stage. And so it's really about taking a very new course and thinking very critically how we recycle and use the buildings in our historic environment, this is a huge topic, and feel like I only touched and scratched on the surface, and a lot of really fantastic reading out there.

And just wanted to share some final thoughts, because we only have a finite amount of time. And I think one of the things working in the heritage sector, is sometimes it's quite depressing when you see these examples of, you know, fabulous buildings, and because I'm looking at it as part of my job, you research, and you see things. And you see lots, lots, lots, and a lot of it is down to not all of it. But a lot of it is down to poor measurement, and poor valuation. And this is where we're really advocating for a much more holistic approach, such as that approach provided by the circular economy.

But if we are actually to make these things happen in reality and not in theory, there are significant changes we need. We need new business models. If we're still pursuing GDP as a metric, there is that incentive to create those profit margins, and making things cheaper, and not thinking about durability of buildings. We need fundamental changes in the economic landscape to really start to accept this because still it is not the model we are pursuing And we need new incentive sustained and determined pub LISHG policy that enable and make these things actually happen. And for me it's thinking really, hard what is the balance between our pursuit of environmental and gain benefits reducing for example our resources, at the same time thinking about society. I think with the circular economy, one of the things is that it does fit, as I said, within the existing economic model, because it's about continuing growth, being more productive in how we use our resources.

So these are some of my main takeaways just to finish off. Economics is powerful. And used widely in decision making. And it shapes outcomes but economic tools are incomplete, and lots of things are external and really need to be folded into our current economic systems in a way that, for example the circular economy is proposing, and the embodied carbon being a really critical element of that, if we're not measuring the whole thing we will not make the right decisions. equally the circular economy fits into the current economic models and repair maintenance and restoration, it has value and is important, it's not just a nice to have. It needs to be part of our energy efficiency packages, so not only thinking about reuse as one thing, it's also that on going repair maintenance to ensure that value is retained and the durability is kept alive as long as possible. And so these are big things, are we ready? We must be. But, there are other economic theories out there, that suggest that even more is needed, and refer you to the economics in particular to that point. So thank you. I think I talked for a long time, thank you very much.

Questions and Answers

Thank you Adala. >> I can honestly say I would listen to twice the length of the subject you cover, because it's so fascinating. I invite everyone if they have any questions to put them in the chat. We have a couple to kick us off with. But thought we would put our pretty faces on the screen, so Matt could change it. So we can see each other, because chatting is a bit soulless if we can't see who is talking. I can see me. Don't know if anyone else is going to join me. Excellent. Thank you so much for both of you covering such in depth subjects in a really succinct and accessible way.

It's one of the subjects when I hear one or the other of you speak I learn a little bit more. And think of all the things I tried to do working in conservation trying to make things last longer, and help people understand we don't need to change something out for new. And my team get a lot of questions, how long if we go for adaptation with a brand new product, will it last 20 years, will it last 30 years. We're putting in a building of bones 1,000 years old, can we really justify it. And well, I don't have a crystal ball, but, I think there are growing body of data and literature and tools we can use to try and fall back on to make our decisions.

One of the first questions we got is from Sara and she's asking if we know of source of data for existing buildings to use modelling without the expense of taking actually measurements, for example, medieval masonry walls, and I know Alice and I have talked about often, but do either of you know. >>

I wasn't sure -- do you mind if I answer.

 Yeah, go.

I wasn't quite sure what data Sara is looking for. Do you mean operational energy, or do you mean the sunk embodied carbon costs of medieval masonry walls. And I got that term sunk cost, if from one of my PhD students Hanna baker, ho looked at whether you should include that additional cost embodied carbon in a, an assessment or not. 

So I'm not sure I'm not sure if Sarah wants to add to the chat. I can probably pick it up again. I know that we've spoken bout quantify, you know the body carbon in buildings that already exist is just such a huge task 

I can recommend a paper by Hanna baker one of my PhD students at Cambridge. and I've actually got a link to it. I can just copy the link, which discusses this in the chat for everyone. 

Brilliant. The other question that's come up is, is about Trump contractors to carbon emission targets, three contracts and whether there's any practical . And just got really interesting question specifically trying produce guides and guidelines, and client rules of thumb, for a lot of information in this area. Do either of you know of anything specific that we can suggest? PSH . 

I will say it is being done, and government have a lot of ways of rapping wrapping emissions targets, and as well as wider environmental targets into their contracts. There is information on the UK Greenville County schools in the World Green Building Council. And I would suggest also looking at the contractors declares website. That's a movement -- don't know if everyone knows. Lots and lots of declares. Heritage declares, and architect declares. aware of this problem, and are looking to be careful, because they can acknowledge that there is a there is a space to be filled. And I will take that one away and try and think that could form another webinar, it could perform another sort of how to take on our, on our website, which. That really guides people in that. Sara came back and said it's more the operational carbon, ready access to values to the whole building energy assessments. Oh, yes. 

So that's not my particular field, but my PhD student will be talking on the Technical Tuesdays at some point, and talking about U-values of different heritage buildings, basically in Cumbria. 

I think coming on the next technical Tuesday. Not sure if next week, or week after. It will come out, on the newsletter you will get the update. It is fascinating, and looking at comparing the operational energy of traditional buildings in Cumbria versus modelled energy use, and another previous technical Tuesday, looking at the same thing that the my team did. Looking at commercial buildings to EPCB and modelling around that. We are putting out research paper we did last year as well in this. And we under took some small study looking at different available tools. LCA tools, and how appropriate they were for use in traditional and heritage buildings, and so it's something we're really aware of we need guidance and little bit more rule of thumb, and hoping to try over the next year, to try to identify good data sets, and who is doing what and make sure it's available, and watch the space in terms of recommendations and tools and knowledge.

Can I just add something there. I think this is one of the really big problems that we have. Is there is increasingly this body of research that Alice really pointed out exponential growth in it. But the reason why something like GDP is so well used and liked is because it's one metric, we can compare different countries, and compare everything, and even though in reality, we can't. But, it seems to be that thing.

And this is where we really need all this research to come up with something that standardized and harmonized and one of our really problematic issues is a lot of the time -- with the data, using U values in a model is not based on traditional construction. Let alone, medieval construction. That often we're painting over the heritage, and assuming the historic buildings will behave exactly like the newbuildings, where they are applying these things, and real need for increasing the information and data, but also making sure it's standardized and available. The problem I always find with heritage, I always talk about uniqueness and diversity, and how wonderful and brilliant that is.

When you do modelling it's difficult when you have diversity, and always something about averages, when you look at distribution and heritage, you are going, the distribution is so wide compared to a newbuild you have everything in a nice little box -- not always, but it's that idea that we in the sector, working with partners, we definitely can't do it ourselves, is really starting to create these data bases that people can use, and really have -- and it needs to be robust and something we are rely on and trust, and probably a mission of decades maybe rather than a year or two. And this is why the urgency is becoming clearer and clearer. Because, there are costs, opportunity costs here.

Absolutely, there are. And I think as you pointed out Adala, we often see loss and try to make arguments around keeping buildings and reusing buildings and acknowledging their former function, and their other more positive contributions to our lives. You know, the interesting thing about built environment, whether you take heritages as one thing or all things. That tapestry of how we live and going to live. And we need to somehow balance standards and standardization and modelling with not crushing joy and interest and delight. And you know, what make our lives worth going out of the door and coming away from the screen.

I don't just say that as a just a building obsessive. So if you could recommend some introductory reading on perhaps ecological economics, anything you can suggest would be fab. And picking up on the comment, completely agree. Feels like awful awful a lot of problems. we need to solve in this space, and then there are, there are days when I feel really optimistic, there are some really good pieces of work, and you're modelling is, is getting better and everything is kind of just having That conversation around the demolition and that being stopped. That was such a moment. this year, as well as all the things that have been hard to watch. Also there's been some really positive things. I just like to end then asking you both, sort of, what If you could share one positive thing that you notice is happening, and people to know about, and maybe a wish you would like to see Alice, so anything that is great that people are contributing and people should know.

I think government are a bit late in the day. But finally catching on to how important this is. So with the latest report to the audit committee, has come to all the right conclusions. And it's fantastic, and following Scandinavian countries and put building carbon regulations in Sweden and Denmark and Norway and Finland, So there is really movement here and 20 years too late, but it's actually happening on a wish, you said, I hope that people will recognize that heritage sector have the right answers, and so you've been doing exactly what we should all be doing for forever. And so we now need to be applying what you know to all the kind of less beautiful but still high embodied carbon sort of 70s 80s 90s 60s buildings that are just being demolished, we should start treating them like heritage buildings.

Adala: Not because I have to but because I want to to really point to the culture and heritage capital approach that we have been working on. Which is really a way of trying to move beyond this idea that "everything that matters is traded on the market ". And that's what we have to completely shift our mind set. And to understand that actually people value things. They value very different things, but people value things even if they're not traded on markets, and that's really, really important, and starts to feature more strongly in economics and something we in the heritage sector have been advocating for, in a way that doesn't translate directly in the language of economic platform, but is a language we translate into the economics and is really important if we're going to move away from this kind of constant chasing of this economic growth. And this is the thing. I can't remember, I did a calculation, I think since the 1940's, seen 6,000 fold increase in global GDP. We look at happiness and population, nowhere near this. Seeing huge amounts of wealth or income, yet, we're missing certain things that make people tick. And misses things that make people happy, essentially, and need to be more emotional in our economics, and I think that's what you have to do with the and heritage capital approach and its research and development, will it work, I don't know.but we'll try. 

Sounds great, do you have a wish.

I have a wish for fabulous database, that includes heritage, and all types and sorts of heritage, that accounts for carbon, and does internationally, and doesn't do this things we're excluding vast amounts of our demanded carbon emissions. So lots of international attempts to do this, I think OECD are leading the way in that regard. But we really need to start to move. And it has to be an international collaboration, and that's where it becomes really difficult. I wish we could collaborate internationally and successfully on this.

I completely agree.

I think it leaves me to say, I am optimistic in some ways, completely agree we're 20 years or more too late, in some respects, but we have such a lot to learn, and think of that, those graphs you were showing, Alice, the global South has a lot to teach us about how to make buildings and our lives less carbon intensive. And as well our history and way that we built in the past, and materials we use, and care we took has an awful lot to teach us in the future. And those are my wishes to find a way to make sure the things we know within the heritage sector, building conservation, can be taken and more broadly accepted as a good thing to do. Thank you so much both of you, your presentations were fascinating, and intrigued to know where to go next with the subject. Anyone have suggests or thoughts, or pop them in the chat. Or email me or any of my team, we are really open to understanding what people need to know in this area so that we can have a greater reach and the more positive impact. Thanks very much, I'm gonna turn my camera off and drift away. Thanks. Bye. 

Concluding remarks

Thank you so much, absolutely fascinating presentation, and I think you will all agree. Many thanks to our attendees and guests who joined us today. And were able to stay with us, as we did run slightly overtime, as I think we traditionally do. But the subjects are always so fascinating, and most people would agree it's worth hanging on. I just put, before you do go, I put some links in front of you there. If you click on the headings, webinars, and webinar survey, and so forth, you will see the URL appear at the bottom of the window. Webinars will take you to the webinar pages, on the historic England website, where you will find details of up and coming webinars, as well as details and links to recordings of previous webinars, the webinar survey, is your chance to tell us what we're doing right. With our webinars, and in deed what we're doing wrong as well. And in deed making suggestions for future topics, and the historic England advice and guidance will take you to the pages on the historic England website. Obviously we have a lot of links in the chat there. I advice if you are able to select all and copy and paste the chat into a word document, so you have all the links saved. That said, thank you all very much for your time today, hope you found today's webinar as fascinating and informative as I certainly have. And we certainly look forward to seeing all of you again very soon. That said, we'll mute our microphones and leave it open a couple minutes. And if I could ask our presenters to please stay with us. Thank you very much much. Have a good afternoon, take care, bye.