Carbon calculator is latest help for fit-out firms wanting to be fit for the future

By Chris Wheal

June 26, 2024

Calculating carbon emissions is complicated

Sustainability is today’s buzzword. And it is slowly starting to shift from talk to action. Ireland’s Construction Industry Federation this month launched a free tool to help firms measure and report their carbon emissions. It’s also available in the UK.

The carbon calculator is designed to make it simple for fit out firms to calculate their total emissions and apportion them to their clients. The system asks for simple information and calculate the carbon footprint. Firms submit data in the categories relevant to them and leave the rest blank. The categories include:

· Transport: miles travelled by each type of vehicle

· Fossil fuels: for relevant firms 

· Fugitive emissions: refrigerants in heating and ventilation systems

· Electricity: taken from bills, including any renewable energy

· Materials: such as concrete, copper, steel and plastics

· Waste: type of waste and is it sent to landfill, combusted or recycled

· Water: consumed and treated

· Other emissions: such as if your suppliers can tell you their emissions

Each of the categories has a basic reporting structure but offers the chance to go into greater detail if required. The data only need be submitted once a year and will enable reporting to each client on the carbon footprint of their contracts.

Focus on ease of use

The calculator is managed by Action Sustainability. Max Lajtha, sustainability consultant, says the focus currently is on ease of use to get as many firms as possible inputting data. As regulation, investor demands and customer pressure increases, firms will need more detailed levels of information, including from further down the supply chain.

Firms are also asked to provide details of their policies and strategies and whether or not they are certified to different standards, such as ISO 4001 or SBTI. Users get their own dashboard, showing where their main carbon consumption comes from, to help them target reductions. 

Action Sustainability hopes to introduce benchmarking once the data volumes are high enough.

Carbon reporting methods

There are three methods for reporting carbon: 

· Spend based: a set conversion rate for each industry based on costs

· Apportionment: each client’s percentage of your turnover is their proportion of your carbon emissions

· Project or site specific: inputs and measurement for each individual site or project are calculated

The carbon calculator uses the middle method, apportionment. This makes it easy and is more accurate than spend-based calculations. But Lajtha says over time more main contractors will start to demand site or project data. This will require fit-out firms to submit data on a per project basis instead of annually.

A long way to go

There’s a long way to go for the fit-out sector to be part of the circular economy. Figures out this week from CDP, which was initially the Carbon Disclosure Project, found barely any companies – just 1% – reported carbon emissions for all 21 indices. The supply chain is a particular sore point. This is where many Scope 3 emissions would be counted. Just 33% of firms reported Scope 3 emissions.

The UN Environment Programme published a report in March this year saying the construction sector globally was responsible for more than a fifth of the world’s global emissions in 2022. It put a headline on the report announcement Not yet built for purpose.

The report put a lot of emphasis on the fit-out elements, covering heating and ventilation, energy efficiency, green building and even biophilia. But the report said: “The 2024 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction indicates a significant lag in the sector’s progress toward the Paris Agreement’s net-zero carbon targets by 2050.”

For example, the report said heat pumps had been fitted in single family homes and needed to be used more widely. “Multi-storey apartment buildings and commercial spaces will need to be prioritised. Alongside new construction, retrofitting existing buildings with heat pumps where appropriate will also need to accelerate,” the report said.

The carbon calculator is a good start.

Tell us if you think the sector is doing enough to tackle carbon emissions.