Net zero carbon buildings standards coalition launches call for evidence

The team developing the UK’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard (the NZCBS) has launched a call for evidence, to help inform and guide the development of the Standard. Once developed, the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard aims to provide a single agreed definition and methodology for the industry to determine what constitutes a net zero carbon building. The cross-industry group developing the Standard and championing this initiative includes representatives from the following organisations: Better Buildings Partnership (BBP), Building Research Establishment (BRE), the Carbon Trust, Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), Low Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI), Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), and UK Green Building Council (UKGBC).

Having established governance and delivery teams, the NZCBS coalition is now calling on UK built environment industry practitioners to supply operational energy and embodied carbon performance data for their buildings. This will support the development of their evidence base over the coming months.

Firstly, the NZCBS coalition is seeking operational energy data for buildings – specifically in-use consumption data from the best performing existing buildings, and modelled performance data for buildings in design or construction. This data will enable the NZCBS development team to understand what today’s benchmark for energy performance is, and what current and future best practice might look like. As part of this, the NZCBS is also calling for experts to assist with energy modeling – more information on this can be found in the call for evidence guide.

Secondly the NZCBS team is seeking embodied carbon data from both new construction and retrofit projects. This will enable the NZCBS development team to set out benchmarks for embodied carbon emitted in the construction process of different building types across the UK.

Participants are invited to submit data via the Built Environment Carbon Database.The deadline for submitting data is 16th December 2022. The NZCBS Call for Evidence coincides with the launch of the beta version of the BECD this week.

Those with operational energy and embodied carbon performance data to share are encouraged to review the call for evidence guide, available on the project website with more detail on the process for supplying data.

For additional guidance on relevance and suitability of data required, the team can be contacted on: energydata@NZCbuildings.co.uk  or Embodieddata@NZCBuildings.co.uk , depending on the type of data in question.

The NZCBS Technical Steering Group will be hosting a webinar on Thursday 17th November at 9.30am. They’ll be providing a general update on progress on the development of the Standard as well as taking part in an audience Q&A session. Find out more and register to attend.