Adam O’Rourke, Causeway Technologies enabling technology consultant, looks at the work that is going on in the industry to implement accurate as built reporting on scope 3 emissions in construction and the challenges leaders are overcoming.  

According to the World Green Building Council, the built environment is responsible for 39% of global climate emissions – both in terms of embodied carbon in construction materials and the construction processes, and operational carbon emitted via buildings in use. 

Contractors and the wider construction industry are uniquely positioned to make a huge impact on the overall reduction of carbon emissions as we work towards Net Zero targets. 

Scope 3 accounts for a large majority of a contractor’s overall carbon emissions. Scope 3 emissions are generated by the production and delivery of products and supplies into the business, and by the use of the products or services created by the company. The GHG Protocol has identified 15 different categories of scope 3 emissions. According to the Carbon Trust, scope 3 emissions typically make up 70-90% of an organisation’s emissions.  

But such emissions are notoriously difficult to measure, especially in an industry as complex as construction, where there can be hundreds of suppliers and subcontractors involved in a project. Regardless, there is mounting pressure from regulators, investors, and campaigners who see the lack of a viable measurement method as a major barrier to progress.  

Regulations are evolving all the time. To date, reporting on scope 3 emissions has been voluntary. However, future reporting requirements for UK companies are expected to become more demanding, and there is growing insistence on compliance with PAS 2080, a standard for managing carbon in building and infrastructure. This is a key reference document in the UK government’s Construction Playbook, and is one of the new 5 Client Carbon Commitments being promoted by the Construction Leadership Council, Infrastructure Projects Authority and others. 

There are also many organisations lobbying for regulators to add a dedicated embodied carbon section to Building Regulations – the so-called Part Z. The need for businesses to engage with carbon measurement will only become more urgent.  

So where do we go next? 

A group of tier 1 contractors, including Aggregate Industries, Balfour Beatty, Galliford Try, Morgan Sindall, Kier and Vinci Construction UK have joined in partnership with Causeway Technologies on a ground-breaking project aimed at developing automated, real-time reporting of embodied carbon to support scope 3 emissions reporting in the construction sector.  

The problem we are collaborating on revolves around a lack of consistent as-built carbon data, varying transparency associated with this data, difficulties accessing data and, the need for a unified reporting mechanism.  

These uncertainties impact all contractors when reporting and disclosing their carbon emissions and this makes accurate comparison between different organisations difficult.  

The accurate measurement and recording of transactional carbon have been constrained by the lack of integration between existing digital technologies. Our industry has been reliant on generic carbon calculators, providing only estimations at the project’s outset. As such, it is important to recognise that the quality of the current underlying data is on an evolution curve – contractors know they do not have the perfect data for every product.  

We believe that providing a real-time transaction-based carbon reporting solution is the key to not only improving scope 3 carbon data but, more importantly, supporting building life cycle information required for the determination of the embodied carbon of the completed building.  

The heart of our group’s solution is the bringing together of finance and sustainability teams to develop a credible, verifiable, efficient and scalable way to measure emissions in real-time, using a combination of invoice data and emissions data from industry sources.  

By linking up financial and procurement data and associating scope 3 emissions with specific projects and transactions, businesses gain real-time insights into their environmental impact during construction activities. This heightened visibility empowers contractors to make informed decisions that can lead to a significant reduction in emissions. 

By collaborating on this project, we are encouraging our supply chains also to work together, leveraging practical solutions that can be easily adopted by all stakeholders. With such a unified effort, we can avoid the pitfalls of greenwashing as we rely on transparent, consistent, and scalable reporting tools. 

At the end of the project, our solution, named Causeway Tradex Carbon, will allow the supply chain to report their embodied carbon data via a connected digital platform providing greater visibility and transparency of the relative carbon impact of different products and materials. This supports more informed procurement decisions and allows suppliers to maximise the potential of their investment in low carbon products and materials.  

Causeway’s Adam O’Rourke will host sessions on days one and two of DCW on the Net Zero stage. He will be discussing the challenges of embodied carbon reporting and the outcomes of the Tradex Carbon initiative. The day two panel session will include highly influential group from Kier and Vinci Construction UK.