Embodied Carbon for Sustainable Building Conservation

This timely volume provides the latest research, guidance, examples, and methods for understanding, calculating, leveraging, and reducing embodied carbon in building conservation. In the context of climate change and increasing energy costs, imperatives to replace or substantially modify older and historic buildings are rapidly accelerating. The idea that a new or replacement building will perform better overlooks the embodied carbon of that which it replaces. In effect, the pressures of one conservation agenda, that of energy efficiency, threaten to eclipse another, that of heritage. The embodied carbon of existing buildings must be addressed if calculations of operational energy use are to be properly balanced.

In this book, an international and multi-disciplinary group of authors offer perspectives on the influence and implementation of strategies to account for embodied carbon for the conservation of the historic environment. Examples are deliberately diverse and extend beyond buildings to the valorisation of a heritage grassland landscape specifically because of its capacity to store carbon, to the fundamental attributes of historic concrete and our responsibility to consider replacement with critical care.

This book inspires confidence in developing arguments by spreading examples globally and delivering plausible, actual narratives alongside clear up-to-date guidance. It brings together international standard-setters with practitioners, academics and advocates, all clearly explained. It also illustrates how embodied carbon played a pivotal role in seeking to determine the case of saving Marks and Spencer, Oxford Street, London, from replacement. This will be an essential resource for all building conservation and heritage practitioners including building surveyors, architects, conservators, engineers, conservation officers, building archaeologists and consultants.

Oriel Prizeman is Professor of Sustainable Building Conservation at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. Formerly a practicing architect, she founded an MSc at Cardiff (2013) and Centre (2021). She was a board member of the Association for Preservation Technology (USA) 2015–2017 and of Architects Accredited in Building Conservation (UK) since 2024.