Emissions from materials and vehicles used in infrastructure construction will soon be measured consistently across Australia so governments can consider pollution, as well as cost, speed of completion and build quality of construction firms’ competing bids.
The commonwealth and states and territories have endorsed a plan from the New South Wales government to decarbonise infrastructure projects, a key part of which is measuring and valuing embodied emissions.
In construction, embodied emissions refers to the carbon emitted through the production and transportation of materials such as concrete and steel, as well as from a project’s eventual decommissioning.
Unlike emissions generated directly by a project’s function – on a railway line, for example, the diesel or electricity used to power the rolling stock – embodied emissions have been notoriously difficult to measure and have largely not been factored into the bidding process.
Industry and climate advocates have warned that construction companies have had little incentive to innovate their supply chain and design choices to minimise indirect emissions.
These emissions are thought to account for up to 10% of Australia’s total emissions, according to government estimates, and are considered important to address for the country and states to meet net zero commitments.
NSW has been a frontrunner in planning to tackle embodied emissions, with the infrastructure minister in the former Coalition government, Rob Stokes, outlining a plan last year to reduce the emissions inpublic works by 2027.
The plan has been continued by the Labor government and transport minister, Jo Haylen.
At a transport and infrastructure ministers’ meeting in Perth last month, the commonwealth and states and territories endorsed NSW’s model.
NSW’s now nationally backed framework will develop a consistent metric to quantify emissions, which will be brought to the ministers’ meeting in mid-2024 for agreement.
Haylen said it was time for governments both in NSW and around Australia “to reassert their role as leaders in emissions reduction”.
“After a decade in the slow lane, Australian governments are now on the fast track to greener infrastructure, with NSW leading the nation on this critical work,” Haylen said.
“Industry is crying out for certainty to allow them to make smart investment and procurement decisions, drive down costs and reduce environmental impacts,” she said.
The CEO of the Climateworks Centre, Anna Skarbek, welcomed the NSW model.
“This recognises the life cycle of emissions has many steps in it,” she said, suggesting that cost-benefit analysis decisions for governments to fund certain infrastructure projects may not stack up under the new model.”
The project manager of infrastructure at Climateworks Centre, Rebecca Powell, said Australia was “behind the ball” on embodied emissions compared with Europe.
She said the approach to value carbon was also significant.
“The valuing question is, if you have measured the emissions, what value do you place on removing them?
“There might be a situation where when you consider the lifecycle emissions to build a new road, the answer might be to build public transport instead,” Powell said.
The CEO of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Adrian Dwyer, said that under the model, governments could set thresholds for projects to encourage better industry practices.
Dwyer said this was important because there are no clear technology to improve concrete and steel production to be less emissions intensive – both materials which are “ubiquitous” and difficult to replace in construction.
“If you’re measuring consistently you can compare across projects, so for example, a government could say we will only accept proposals of 700 units of carbon, and that might mean one bid changes its design to use a higher-strength concrete but less overall, or electric vehicles to be used more in production.”
