Episode 315: Jono Mountfort on how to reduce the carbon embodied in the materials and products used in the built environment

Talking Architecture & Design

This episode explores the critical shift in architecture from operational energy efficiency to reducing embodied carbon across the entire lifecycle of

Key takeaways

• Embodied carbon encompasses the full lifecycle of materials, from raw extraction and manufacturing to transport, installation, maintenance, and end-of-life treatment.
• Longevity and durability are identified as the most effective carbon reduction strategies, spreading embodied emissions over a longer service life.

Main topics

• Embodied carbon vs operational energy
• Material selection and EPD verification

Notable quotes

Longevity is really one of the best carbon strategies that there is.

Conclusion

The episode demonstrates that decarbonizing the built environment requires shifting from isolated material

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) This episode is brought to you by Autex Acoustics, a global leader in high-performance interior acoustic solutions. Proudly manufactured right here in Australia for 35 years now. At Ortex, sustainability isn't a checkbox, it's the blueprint. Their core acoustic product, Cube, is crafted using a minimum of 80 % recycled PET, and they are also 100 % carbon neutral across their global operations and product range. Designed for spaces where people work, learn and live. Autex is committed to innovation that puts both people and the planet first. Learn more at Autex, that's A-U-T-E-X, acoustics.com.au. Hello and welcome to Talking Architecture and Design, the podcast from the Architecture and Design Network. I'm your host, Branko Miletic, and today we are looking at one of the most important challenges facing the architecture and design industry. How do we reduce the carbon embodied in the materials and products that make up our buildings and interiors? Speaker 1 (1:35) So as operational energy efficiency improves, attention is increasingly turning to embodied carbon. The emissions associated with extracting raw materials, manufacturing products, transporting them, installing them and ultimately dealing with them at the end of their useful life. That puts materials and material innovation firmly at the center of the conversation. So to explain and explore all this, I'm joined today by, once again, by Jonathan Mountford, Creative Director at Autex Acoustics. Jonathan has more than two decades of experience across design and manufacturing, with a career spanning mechanical engineering, product design, materials innovation, and of course, acoustics. At Altex, he leads a team working across design and engineering and has been involved in recycling technologies, product development, and the company's broader sustainability journey. I believe he's just back from London. for something just that. Jonathan brings a particular interesting perspective because he sits at the intersection of product design, manufacturing and architecture. Three areas that increasingly need to work together if we're going to reduce the carbon impact of the built environment. So Jonathan, welcome to Talking Architecture and Design. Speaker 2 (3:05) Thanks for having me, Branko. Good to see you again. Yes, it is, isn't it? Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:10) It's been a while, but you've actually came back. Yeah, it's been a year, Speaker 2 (3:14) yeah. Speaker 1 (3:15) You must have enjoyed it the first time. So let's start with embodied carbon, okay? So for many years, the sustainability conversation, in fact, in some way it still is, in architecture, focused heavily on operational energy. how efficiently a building performs once it's occupied. But as buildings become more energy efficient, the carbon associated with materials and construction becomes increasingly important. So why should architects and designers be paying much more attention to embodied carbon and where are the biggest opportunities, rather, to reduce it? Speaker 2 (3:54) Yeah. Now, that's quite a good question. Speaker 2 (4:00) that sort of sits on a journey of everybody beginning to understand what it takes to work in harmony with natural systems better. So if you break it down, embodied carbon is that upfront irreversible chunk of carbon that's emitted when building a building. So it's the raw material extraction, the manufacturing of the steel, the glass, everything else. It's your transport to a site to actually... get about building it, the construction processes, maintenance, replacement, demolition and the end of life treatment. So it's a great big envelope. And in a lot of that, we've got a lot of levers to pull versus operational carbon is, you know, you rely on embodied carbon to reduce the operational carbon, if you know what I'm talking about. Speaker 2 (4:51) The building itself operates as well as it's been constructed. So you're setting one up to then discount the next. Speaker 2 (5:02) So, yeah, reduction opportunities sits sort of twofold really, well, in my mind. You've got the actual construction of it. You've got the structure, concrete, steel, the massing. You've got the material quantity, which you can then go through and use really smart to design, design to start reducing the quantities of material going into things whilst using, again, design and high performance materials to... maintain that performance and cost effectiveness aesthetics etc and that spills into those envelope materials a lot of systems using glass at the moment um and aluminium cladding systems massive embodied carbon in that but once you sort of optimize your wall to window ratio you've got lower carbon facades starting to look at um uh mass timber or you know timber style facades now and different ways of treating it Well, ultimately, I guess, reuse and renovation instead of new construction could play a huge part there. You sort of bring yourself round fully around to Speaker 2 (6:12) Design for durability, the longer something lasts, the longer that carbon is spread across when you're thinking about it being embodied in a building. And then the grand bastion at the end of all that is that if that material that you've sequestered in that building, used to construct it, is circular, you're able to then take that out, pull it apart and reuse it in many different forms or different pathways. Then you start. the opportunities really really go through the ceiling because you start um a completely different economy you start you know we start moving from simply worrying about commons and thinking about how we transition materials through a whole cycle so yeah end of life circularity makes up um Speaker 2 (7:10) the last of those great big opportunities realistically. Speaker 1 (7:18) It seems like a simple... Speaker 1 (7:22) subject, but it's actually really not because it has a lot of inputs as you have described. Yes, Speaker 2 (7:30) they start affecting each other. Speaker 1 (7:32) So Speaker 2 (7:33) the quality of that embodied portion or the part that makes the fabric of the building directly affects the operational. Speaker 2 (7:46) life of the building but then yeah and then you've got the lever of longevity durability the ability to repair the ability to do to to um manipulate that building's use into the future then really starts to temper the embodied carbon section of it. Speaker 1 (8:08) So when architects specify a material, they're making a decision that has a, you know, I guess a long-term, medium to long-term carbon consequence. You know, whether we're talking concrete, steel, timber, aluminium, plastics, textiles, composite material, anything really. But embodied carbon can be difficult to understand and compare when... products have different manufacturing processes and, dare I say, different lifespans. What should architects be looking for when assessing the carbon impact of a material product? And how can they distinguish between you know, meaningful environmental performance from simply good sustainability marketing or as we like to call it, greenwashing. You're the first Speaker 2 (9:02) thing that needs to be. sort of top of the list when you're looking at embodied carbon is making sure that that building's going to do what it needs to do for as long as it can do that. So like from my mind, you're looking at the longevity of it and how it's going to perform and how it will evolve its use into the future. So you've got your performance of it. So it's got to actually stack up and do everything it needs to. needs to do, provide, whether it be a house or whether it be an office block or a sports facility or whatever it is. It needs to functionally perform and hit all of that. It needs to look really good. Otherwise, a lot of value is in an aesthetic of something as well, not just its function. So we're sort of flipping the concept nearly on its head, and it needs to be affordable. You need to be able to actually pay for it. you know, it needs to fit within the budget. So when you're looking at something from, and I've kind of flipped that script a little bit with respect to, we're looking at carbon last, but if we've met those other metrics first, we begin to set up a really, really good system to make sure that we've got, we then start critiquing those materials that go into it and how do we use them. really well and so once you're looking at that you've you know you might use a little bit of a higher carbon material whereas you might need a lot of a lower carbon material