Mr. Se?n Armstrong:

The area of embodied carbon and embodied carbon accounting frameworks is very technical and complex. Such accounting also has a significant market impact. There must be robust and transparent databases in place stating the embodied carbon. There has to be clear, transparent and robust accounting methods for measuring the embodied carbon and it has to be done by experts in this area.

It has to be managed by an independent, trusted authority. Significant work is required to establish embodied carbon measurements for new and existing buildings in a way that can be used on a statutory basis, or for procurement purposes. To establish this in new or existing buildings, these databases, accounting methodologies, software, training of assessors and centralised databases have to be established. I would not say it is easier with the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings, but it is more possible to do it with new buildings, because one has all the information when building them. One has all the data on materials one is using. When establishing a very complex system such as this, the easiest or most direct pathway to establish it is on new buildings, like we did for the BER system, and extend it to existing buildings.

What we can do for existing buildings is develop them in a qualitative way and have policies and principles to support the use of existing buildings while, at the same time, developing the methodologies of databases, starting with new buildings. When we have the systems for new buildings up and running, they should be extended to existing buildings.