International Industrial Ecology Day 2022
11:00 - 12:00 (GMT) - Advancements in LCA Applications in the Built Environment (11:00 UTC)
Please register at EventBrite or join directly on Teams
Hosted by: Eugene Mohareb (University of Reading), Session Time: 11:00 am GMT
Increasing value is being placed on whole-life accounting in urban areas, as well as avenues of reducing material demand and associated life cycle impacts. For example, the UK’s public procurement guidance in the 2022 Construction Playbook highlights the need for whole-life accounting, net-zero strategies, and circular economy initiatives. Beyond public works, the Companies Act (2022) requires large firms to report on strategy related to social impacts, human rights issues, and environmental implications of their operations including climate change risks, emissions quantification and mitigation. This leads to questions of what are the implications for built environment professionals, which data resources are available to to understand life cycle impacts of projects, and what further support is required to meet our broader urban sustainability ambitions beyond 2050 carbon targets. This panel will discuss applications of life cycle thinking in the built environment, with topics including embodied carbon, data uncertainty, resource circularity assessments, and assessment of local biodiversity gains. Presentations will run for ~45 minutes, with 15 minutes for Q&A.
11:00 – 11:05 am GMT: Introduction
11:05 – 11:15 am GMT: “Resource use circularity: a case study of UK car-based mobility” Gabriel Carmona Aparicio
11:15 – 11:25 am GMT: “Assessing life cycle impacts of buildings – is our data good enough?” John Connaughton
11:25 – 11:35 am GMT: “Local and life cycle ecosystem impacts of urban green roofs: using energetics to quantify the local biodiversity gain associated with urban green infrastructure” Adam Mason
11:35 – 11:45 am GMT “Built environment as a pathway for reducing embodied GHG” Shoshanna Saxe
11:45 - 12:00 pm GMT - Questions to the panel
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Speaker List |
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Gabriel Carmona Aparicio is a Marie Curie Research Fellow working on resource efficiency, material/energy services and the circular economy at University of Cambridge. In 2020, Gabriel completed his PhD in Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). He focused on the stock-flow-service nexus to facilitate a more comprehensive analysis of resource production, consumption, and accumulation. Gabriel worked on several H2020 projects, where he assessed the sustainability of emerging technologies. He also has over fifteen years of experience working as a consultant and sustainability professional in Europe and Latin American. |
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John Connaughton is Professor of Sustainable Construction in the School of the Built Environment at the University of Reading. John has over 40 years' experience in the construction sector, and, in the area of sustainable construction, has particular expertise in material resource efficiency, life-cycle carbon reduction and energy use in buildings. He also has interests in collaboration in design and construction, construction procurement, and the management of the design process. Prior to joining the University in 2012 John was a Partner in Davis Langdon, one of the world’s largest construction cost and project management businesses. He was Chair of the Executive Board of the UK Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) from 2014 to 2021. |
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Adam Mason is a PhD candidate at Imperial College London. His research looks at quantifying and modelling natural resource use in ecosystems analogous to and alongside that of socioeconomic (i.e., human) systems, to develop more comprehensive tools for ecological impact assessments. Adam is particularly interested in integrating ecological data into life cycle assessment, to improve quantification of the local biodiversity impacts of urban green infrastructures (e.g., gardens and green roofs). Adam holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, and worked in industry as a graduate engineer at BOC before starting his PhD. |
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Shoshanna Saxe is an Associate Professor in Civil and Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure. She researchs the intersection of the physical world we build and the society we create, particularly focused on outcomes for environmental sustainability. Prof. Saxe’s research asks two main questions: What should we build? And how should we build it? |
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Eugene Mohareb (host) is Associate Professor in Sustainable Urban Systems in the School of the Built Environment at the University of Reading. His research examines at greenhouse gas mitigation in urban areas, with a focus on domestic retrofit and decarbonisation of food systems. |