Bennetts Associates contributes to the new LETI guidance to designers launched today

27.01.2020

Today we’re proud to support the release of LETI’s¹ guidance documents which give a clear roadmap to delivering the sorts of buildings that are required to meet our current climate emergency. Bennetts Associates has been actively involved in the work of LETI for over two years, and for the last year we have worked with a small number of designers to distil our collective knowledge of embodied carbon into the Embodied Carbon primer. The document is designed to quickly upskill design professionals in a subject that is critically important but little understood. Alongside work to incorporate embodied carbon into the new London Plan, also through LETI, we feel that 2020 is the year that embodied carbon will become mainstream, it certainly needs to be.

Between the Climate Emergency Design Guide² and the Embodied Carbon Primer³, architects and engineers now have the tools to deliver buildings which not only comply with our climate targets, but also which push towards a more regenerative economy, and in terms of operational energy finally do away with the performance gap. The reports contain benchmarks and roadmaps to a net-zero built environment, and most importantly, rules of thumb for those that do not have the resources to measure right now but who can reduce immediately.

In the coming weeks we will go into a little more detail on the knowledge that is in the Embodied Carbon Primer, how Bennetts Associates has already been applying this to our projects, and most importantly our latest ambitions for accelerating our targets for projects in line with the LETI, UKGBC and RIBA proposals. In the meantime, if you have signed up to Architects (or Engineers) Declare, then go to https://www.leti.london/publications, download the guides and start changing how you work. Paraphrasing Lord Deben and Baroness Brown’s forward to the Committee on Climate Change’s 2019 progress report: “The need for action has rarely been clearer. Our message is simple: Now, do it”

Notes:

• London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) is a voluntary group of developers, engineers, housing associations, architects, planners, academics, sustainability professionals, contractors and facilities managers working to put London on the path to a zero carbon future. Bennetts Associates has been a member of LETI for over two years and has been involved in a number of workstreams, most recently being a part of the team that wrote the Embodied Carbon Primer.
• Climate Emergency Design Guide – Sets out the approach, targets and benchmarks that developments in the UK need to achieve to reach Net Zero in operation. This means that the developers, consultants and policy officers in the UK will have a reference point to define what their developments should achieve to ensure our climate change targets are met.
• The Embodied Carbon Primer - Offers supplementary guidance to the Climate Emergency Design Guide, for those interested in exploring embodied carbon in more detail. There is a current lack of knowledge in the built environment industry surrounding embodied carbon reduction strategies and calculations.