The UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard Guide: Part 10: Refrigerants
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MEng
Sustainability Consultant
The pilot version of the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard (the Standard) was published in September 2024. The full document can be downloaded here. The Standard has been produced by a range of industry professional organisations including RIBA (architecture), IStructE (structural engineering), CIBSE (services engineers) and RICS (surveyors), along with a large team of other industry organisations and professionals.
It aims to set out unambiguously, for a wide range of scenarios, the characteristics that buildings and building projects need to be aligned with the UK’s strategy to become net zero carbon by 2050. The Standard builds upon and supersedes previously published approaches such as the UKGBC Net Zero Carbon Building Framework, the RIBA Climate Challenge and the various LETI design guides.
Read more from our guide:
The pilot version of the standard does not require any carbon offsetting for a building to be net zero carbon aligned. However, there is an option to include offsetting for the building to be considered net zero carbon aligned (with offsets). The offsets would apply for all up-front and in-use emissions associated with the development, namely the following:
If a development does decide to follow the offsetting route, purchased carbon credits must meet either of the following standards:
Additionally, the carbon credit must adhere to the following:
For offsetting Scope 2 emissions only, a development can also go down the route of Renewable Energy Procurement. Three routes can be followed for this:
For the submission, projects going down the net zero carbon aligned (with offsets) route will need to include information on the quantity of carbon credits and renewable energy procured as well as details and a written statement detailing how they meet the requirements detailed above. This should include the following information:
As a practice, we do not offer a service for offsetting, however we have worked on a few projects in which offsetting was used to achieve net zero carbon in compliance with the old UKGBC NZC Framework. One of these is the Max Fordham House, which used both renewable energy procurement and carbon credits in the offsetting strategy. The building is all-electric, so carbon credits were used to offset the upfront carbon only (102tCO2e) and renewable energy is used to offset carbon associated with the operational energy use.
A full breakdown of the Carbon Credit budget can be seen below, and you can read more about this project and the offsets purchased.
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