Capital carbon
Embodied Carbon: Developing a Client Brief, published by the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) in March 2017, suggests capital carbon: ‘…refers to emissions associated with the creation of an asset. Capital carbon is being adopted within the infrastructure sector because it accords with the concept of capital cost. (Going forward, the related term “embodied carbon” will continue to be used at a product-level, whereas capital carbon will have greater relevance at an asset-level).’
PAS 2080:2023 Carbon management in buildings and infrastructure, second edition, published by The British Standards Institution in March 2023, defines capital carbon as: ‘capital carbon GHG emissions and removals associated with the creation and end-of-life treatment of an asset, network or system, and optionally with its maintenance and refurbishment.'
It includes 3 notes:
- NOTE 1 GHG emissions associated with maintenance and refurbishment are included as “optional” under the capital carbon definition because they could also be defined as “operational carbon” emissions, depending on the chosen assessment methodology. The selected terminology is to be clarified as part of the assessment methodology process (see Clause 7).
- NOTE 2 PAS 2080 recognizes the use of the established terms “embodied carbon” and “upfront carbon” by parts of the industry (in accordance with existing life cycle assessments standards and guidance) to refer to similar stages of a whole life carbon assessment. For the purpose of PAS 2080, “capital carbon” is the selected terminology to allow comparison/alignment with the cost management/expenditure profile of projects and/or programmes of work (see Note 3). The selected terminology is to be clarified by the practitioner (as described in Clause 7) and considered in the context of the PAS 2080 whole life carbon framework for decision-making in Clause 4.
- NOTE 3 As defined in the Infrastructure carbon review [1], capital carbon can be alternatively defined as the GHG emissions associated with the scope of capital expenditure defined in accordance with the asset owner’s preference.
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