Building on the Paris Agreement: making the case for embodied carbon intensity targets in construction

Progressive clients are targeting embodied carbon reduction through the introduction of carbon intensity targets (CITs). CITs challenge design teams to deliver buildings with supply chain carbon emissions below a set level per functional unit. Despite CITs acting as catalysts for innovation, there are few drivers for their use and substantial variations in their implementation. There is also no means for ensuring consistency between project CITs and national mitigation targets, nor a mechanism for ratcheting up ambitions as anticipated by the Paris Agreement on climate change. This paper discusses these concerns and suggests how CITs could in future be determined, implemented and enforced.