Towards a Net Zero-Carbon Built Environment: Metrics and Pathways

(1) The overall focus, scope and purpose of the special issue

The built environment, comprising buildings and infrastructure, is responsible for over 35 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. It is of major importance in achieving the Paris target of net zero-carbon by 2030–2050. However, the meaning of “net zero” is often vague and contentious, amid wide misunderstanding that this only comprises reducing operational emissions/carbon. There is increased recognition that lifecycle-embodied carbon, associated with the production and refurbishment of the built environment, plays an increasingly important role. The quest for net zero carbon, including embodied carbon, is closely related to decarbonizing the consumption of resources, including land, materials, energy, and water, in constructing, operating, and managing built forms.

Hence, this Special Issue aims to encourage contributions of the latest ideas and research findings on pursuing a net zero carbon built environment with radical thinking and strategies to shape and advance carbon neutral targets of organizations that own, manage, and/or operate built assets; to develop and deploy building/precinct-integrated renewable energy solutions; to explore options such as “build less” or even “build nothing” by capturing synergies among energy, water, waste, and mobility systems; to maximize the use of existing buildings and infrastructure through smart planning and asset management; and to leverage the alternative ways of delivering more services and better performance, particularly via digital means, with less dependence on the physicality of built forms. With these in sight, the Special Issue welcomes original research on theoretical frameworks, quantitative modeling, empirical analysis, and case studies that draw upon the circular economy paradigm, innovative technologies, and regenerative development approaches that lead to rethinking and redesigning targets, metrics, and pathways for a net zero carbon transformation of the built environment.

(2) How the issue will usefully supplement (relate to) existing literature

Other literature on carbon metrics within the built environment (Lützkendorf 2020) has primarily focused on building construction rather than infrastructure, with more emphasis on scalability, carbon allocations, data, and measurement. While our proposal overlaps, it takes a wider “system” view and places more emphasis on metrics within the context of organizational demand, functions, and services—within a strategic asset management framework. For example, we consider ways in which these requirements may be met with less new buildings and infrastructure, adaptation of existing stock, sharing, integration, and synergies of both services and facilities, and “no build” and “build less” options.

Metrics and pathways will relate to the delivery of service needs with less resource consumption/less carbon, that is, the notion of “resource productivity” (Lettenmeier 2014). For example, can the functions of an organization and the needs of its employees be provided with fewer built resources, carbon, and cost?

In addition, we propose that the Special Issue should consider emerging concepts such as the “doughnut economy” (Raworth 2017), which acknowledge that the economy exists to support human services. This also includes the notion of an upper or “ecological ceiling” for consumption and carbon, and the corresponding idea of a minimum “social foundation” to sustain livelihoods, according to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This leads to the question of equitable and ethical consumption and carbon, with Stahel and others having argued during the 1990s that the global North should “shrink” its consumption by a factor of 10 and “share” resources with the South to overcome extreme poverty and deprivation. Stahel (2008) emphasized that “…the key issue at stake is unbalanced consumption at a global level, an issue of global ethics”.

Dr. Ke Xing
Dr. David Ness
Dr. Bin Huang
Guest Editors

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• embodied carbon
• resource consumption
• service systems
• strategic asset management
• resource productivity
• equity and ethics