The City of London sets out new planning regulation to deal with embodied carbon

A draught planning advice memo addressing the evaluation of full lifetime carbon for all new and large projects has been made available for public comment by the City of London Corporation. In its proposed advice, the authority outlines how it wants developers to estimate and disclose a scheme's total life-cycle carbon emissions implications at an initial stage, even before final designs are created.

Development teams will need to consider lifetime releases for various choices, major refurbishment, including minor refurbishment, new construction, and extension, and according to the Whole Lifecycle Carbon Optioneering note.

Additionally, the paper aims to provide planners and designers with a clear framework for benchmarking, analysis, measurement, and communication. The advising note will be a "material factor in the decision of planning applications," even if it won't carry as much weight as policies in the City's statutory development plan.

Industry observers have applauded the decision, noting that the standards may lead to fewer tall buildings being demolished and assist design teams more efficiently in organising their challenging whole-life carbon analyses.

Despite their optimism, carbon experts have also emphasised that the City must have the necessary tools and will to implement this advice to achieve its goal of being net-zero for the Square Mile by 2040.

The City of London has a disproportionately large negative effect on the environment because it constantly erects new poorly insulated, short-lived structures and is often dismantled every 20 years for business reasons. This planning advice note contains proposals that, if followed, might significantly alter how structures are planned and constructed in the City of London.

With a stress on promising good practice to prove how ambitious marks for whole-life carbon valuation will be met at the early pre-app stage in the design development, it will become increasingly tough to explain the wholesale destruction of tall buildings to make way for building of new and tall buildings.

This new guideline comes at a vital juncture for the development sector as the worldwide discussion around the carbon effect of restoration versus redevelopment carry on to heat up. It is in response to a sector-wide demand for leadership and clarity in this rapidly changing area of sustainability activity.

In accordance with the GLA's accepted guideline, the guidance suggests a system for uniform reporting of total life-cycle carbon emissions in the commercial built environment. In addition, it established a new "visual dashboard" that allowed information to be compared and allowed talks between the applicant and the City's planning and transportation committee about the evaluations.

To make it easier for the planning committee to compare data while evaluating applications, the note will help professional design teams organise their intricate whole-life carbon analyses. The key point is that the City must ensure that planning officers are trained to evaluate whole-life carbon submissions and take important action to deliver on their carbon commitments appropriately.

The planning and transportation committee will review any feedback from the consultation in the fall.

The item will then be put into the official Sustainability Supplementary Planning Document, which will address topics including climate resilience, energy efficiency, and carbon reduction in the built environment for commercial buildings.

Fun Fact: Ansell + Bailey, under the Future Net Zero standard at the moment, are Platinum as they reduced their footprint by more than 50% from the benchmark. (2019)

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