Caroline Noller’s The Footprint Company, which late last year joined TSA Management, is another sign the built environment needs to move fast on decarbonisation.
Noller told The Fifth Estate this week that her team of six had already grown by 30 per cent, hopefully doubling by the end of the year – and yes, she’s inviting talented people to apply.
Noller says her company will remain “an independent brand and a distinct entity but it’s got a mandate to build and grow beyond TSA.
“But at the same time a very big focus of our time is to enable the 700-plus projects advisors and personnel in TSA to, hopefully by end of the year, have the skills to talk across infrastructure building and government advisory [on carbon abatement].”
But the question of how carbon was being measured was an issue that needed further debate and understanding, Noller said.
Currently the focus was on environmental product disclosure. But her work takes things further to look at the embodied carbon that emanates from how the materials are put together in an actual building.
Noller says, “if we just measure the products like concrete and steel in isolation, we’re measuring the building in kilos of materials and only measuring 45-50 per cent of the building.”
The building not only needs to use low carbon material it needs to be designed and planned for low carbon.
It’s a complex arena, and one that clearly needs more exploration.
Right now, says Noller the industry is rife with excuses – such as “the client never asks”. A good result will be that the architects who’ve been busy learning about embodied carbon over the past couple of years will have an evidence-based carbon accounting mechanism to guide them [and will perhaps nudge their clients].
Noller says NSW Treasury has already integrated embodied carbon into its cost-benefit analysis frameworks.
So there’s a lot of interest, she says, from agencies such as Transport for NSW and Schools Infrastructure but for now the policy aspiration and the reality of delivering on the new platform is falling short.
What’s needed is for the delivery of the accounting methodology to be cost effective and consistent.