Climate Neutral & Carbon Offset Construction Projects

We are extending our offering to provide all of our customers the same opportunity across their properties to carbon offset all generated CO2e by facilitating partnerships with ecologically focused projects and schemes within Australia. These schemes will directly carbon offset your project while also helping to tackle UN Sustainability Development Goals across other areas (Social/Education/Equality etc)

How to Quantify your Construction Project Carbon Budget

Valen and our partners work on your behalf to quantify all operational and embodied carbon associated to your project and then find suitable mechanisms to carbon offset the outputs of your project.

From this point it is then optional to reconsider certain suppliers and design methodologies prior to finalising the for construction drawings or suppliers for specific equipment and materials onsite.

Many suppliers and manufacturers are offsetting their products within their supply chains meaning that you don’t have to at the time of construction.

What to look out for in your designs

There are a multitude of emissions rich products in general construction, none less than cement/concrete which alone accounts for a large percentage of global emissions annually.

Essentially however the emissions of operating your building will inevitably over the life of the asset be higher than the embodied carbon so there are multiple considerations when designing and constructing your project.

To minimise operating emissions of your building:

• Electrify everything and add renewable energy (solar) or purchase clean energy in a Power Purchasing Agreement with a clean energy retailer.
• Install energy efficient systems for your HVAC, Lifts, Lighting.
• Insulate your buildings and ensure air tightness as leaky buildings are hugely energy inefficient.
• Maintain your assets proactively to increase efficiency, reduce downtime and reduce the overall cost of ownership over the life of the asset.
• Install smart systems that monitor, switch and generally increase uptime and asset lifecycles while reducing energy usage by your systems.
• Data – ensure you have a means to capture and analyse the data your building can generate, data rich knowledge and the ability to identify trends means you can best operate your building throughout it’s life.

To minimise the footprint of your construction:

• Minimise reliance on conventional concrete. Source Green or Low Carbon cement products. They may be more available than you once imagined.
• Consider timber or other alternative structural members over steel in all situations as again steel is very carbon intensive to produce.
• Design for deconstruction – set up your designs so that materials are easily separated and recycled on completion.
• Source Carbon Neutral (already offset) or low carbon fixtures, fittings, finishes etc.
• Minimise wastage of materials that cannot be restocked, consider donation of spare materials to socially beneficial construction projects etc.
• Recycle all waste products.

Emissions you abate don’t need a Carbon Offset

Carbon Equivalent Emissions (CO2e) Defined

Scope 1: Direct emissions from your owned operations, fleet and premises.

Scope 2: Emissions associated with purchased electricity and associated utilities (emissions associated with the beyond the meter actual usage).

Scope 3: Emissions generated by things you don’t own or control – the production of fuels, the losses in electrical transmission, the emissions in the storage of your data online, the emissions of aircraft or vehicles you travel in, what it took to make your laptop or the fancy lunch at your favourite restaurant.

Read About Valen’s focus and Carbon Zero status here.

Carbon Offset your next project?

If this is something that interests you please reach out to us to discuss further. Send any initial information through to [email protected] or reach out directly to your existing team contacts.