Modern Building Services

FEATURE DATA COLLECTION CALCULATIONS REPORTING Embodied carbon of MEP product Manufacturer form CIBSE TM65 methods Results format Section A filled in Sections A & B filled in Basic calculation Mid level calculation Result form 1 Result form 2 R educing the impact of the built environment has become a priority in the face of a global climate crisis. To date, there has been a strong focus on operational carbon. While embodied carbon is now starting to become a primary consideration the focus however, is often only structure and façades. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems are often omitted or miscalculated. Yet initial studies show that MEP can account for nearly 80% of embodied carbon in retrofit schemes. In addition to reducing operational carbon emissions, building services engineers must increase their awareness of embodied carbon emissions so that the whole life carbon impact of the systems they design and the products they specify is reduced. Embodied carbon emissions are associated with the extraction and processing of materials, transport of products, replacement, disassembly and disposal. MEP equipment often contains metals and plastics, which are associated with a high embodied carbon content and a complex supply chain, involving many manufacturing processes and long transport distances. Buildings often contain large quantities of MEP products which are also replaced regularly throughout a building’s life cycle. How to reduce the embodied carbon of MEP products? Reducing the use and overall weight of MEP equipment is the most effective way to minimise its embodied carbon. The embodied carbon of MEP equipment can also be reduced by specifying equipment with low embodied carbon materials and through ensuring easy access for inspection, maintenance, and replacement to increase the lifetime of the product. Ensuring that products can be disassembled, and materials re-used and recycled is also important. For equipment with refrigerant, it is important to ensure low leakage rates and to specify that the refrigerant used must have a low GWP. In order to understand the magnitude of the problem and the effect of embodied carbon reduction strategies it is necessary to quantify the embodied carbon of MEP products and systems. How to find out the embodied carbon of MEP products? An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a standardised way of describing the environmental impacts, including the embodied carbon, of a product. Therefore, the starting point when trying to find information on a product’s embodied carbon is to ask themanufacturer if an EPD is available for the product. However, it is not always that simple, as we knowMEP products and their supply chains can be complex and the markets and regulators do not provide incentives for EPDs to be produced. As a result, very fewmanufacturers offer EPDs for their MEP equipment. With such limited access to this important information, the building services industry has had little access to vital data about how the embodied carbon of MEP products varies across different systems and products. CIBSE TM65 embodied carbon in building services: a calculation methodology, looks to fill this gap. It provides: • Guidance on how to calculate the embodied carbon of MEP products when no EPDs are available - two methods are available depending on the information that can be accessed about a product. • A consistent approach for collecting the data required for the calculations. • A consistent approach to the way embodied carbon calculations for MEP products are undertaken and reported (at product level). CIBSE has released guidance on the use of environmental product declarations (EPDs) for building services equipment. This guidance also provides amethod for estimating the embodied carbon of building services equipment where EPDs are not yet available New guidance on calculating embodied carbon of building services equipment 28 MODERN BUILDING SERVICES MARCH 2021