The last 12 months have brought a greatly increased awareness of the intersection – and interdependence – between building technology and energy efficiency. With the commercial property sector facing unprecedented challenges as many businesses move towards a more flexible hybrid operational model, and the ongoing unpredictability of energy prices, there is an onus on specifiers and architects to help building owners and tenants to operate in as energy efficient a way as possible. Simultaneously, the level of knowledge that individual organisations have about the role of individual building systems in achieving a low-carbon future has risen markedly. The overwhelming shift away from traditional light sources to LED systems during the past 10 years is a case in point. But, increasingly, building managers and other stakeholders are also cognisant of the connection between their use of technology and obligations to concepts such as embodied carbon and operational carbon – as well as whole life carbon, which is the ‘grand total’ of the two types.
From an electrical contractor’s perspective, there is a clear opportunity to talk to customers about making the move from traditional lighting types to highly efficient LED-based systems.
The use of these terms is giving a welcome sense of definition – and urgency – to the discussion around energy efficiency in buildings. To briefly recap, operational carbon is specifically concerned with the energy required to actually use the light fittings over their entire lifecycle. Embodied carbon pertains to everything that is not directly involved in day-to-day operations – for example, installation, maintenance, materials and so on.
Embodied carbon, in particular, has been in the spotlight recently thanks to the arrival of a new publication by CIBSE entitled ‘Embodied Carbon in Building Services: A Calculation Methodology’ (TM65) (1). Acknowledging that the embodied carbon related to building services design can be considerable over a building’s lifetime – not least due to the choice of materials and the frequency with which replacements are required – TM65 provides guidance on how to use environmental product declarations (EPDs) to assess the embodied carbon of building services equipment. Where EPDs are not available, it offers a methodology by which the embodied carbon can be estimated.
Placed in a purely lighting context, this approach means designers can compare one lighting solution to another in a systematic fashion. It can also be used by other parties – including engineers and specifiers – to generate data that encompasses an entire building, resulting in a more rounded picture of its embodied carbon status.
Article by lighting industry news specialist, Tamlite.