Where is the building sector in its low carbon accounting?

“The climate trajectory forces us to make a number of drastic changes
in construction”, clearly announces Jérôme Di Valentin, chef de services chez Vizcabintroducing his presentation of Carbon barometer 2024 during the last corporate real estate show in Paris.

Present at SIMI, the company Vizcab is developing a collaborative platform dedicated to construction stakeholders and is campaigning for a more carbon-free sector. The objective is ambitious: to achieve a trajectory of 50% reduction in emissions of carbon from the building sector in just ten years.

Since 2021, this barometer is its “key initiative to understand the trends shaping the construction industry and provide the sector with essential insights to navigate an ever-changing landscape”.

This 3^e edition of the Vizcab barometer summarizes a consultation carried out in previous months with 360 actors of this sector (architects, engineers, real estate developers and general contractors), particularly outside France, the investigation having been opened to international markets.

Take advantage of carbon data

The observation presented by Vizcab is that to improve your carbon footprint you must start by having a precise assessment of the latter. It is in fact impossible to reduce the carbon impact of the real estate sector without drawing up a real carbon accounting report from construction materials and the thermal performance of buildings.

“Our ambition is to enable all those involved in construction; planners, promoters, architects, economists, design offices and manufacturers; of take advantage of carbon data and to be able to make informed decisions on this essential subject in real estate“, explain Guillaume Lafont, co-founder of Vizcab.

The platform thus makes it possible to list carbon data and “democratize strokes”, dixit Jérôme Di Valentinby allowing players to easily automate construction life cycle analysis (the famous LCA).

Lack of maturity of LCAs

According to Vizcab experts, certain players in the real estate sector need to improve their skills before embarking on carrying out good LCAs.

“In France, we consider that we are between 5 and 10 years ahead of carbon footprint regulations. We have a form of leadership on this subject but we must continue our efforts because many actors still have the feeling of not being competent in this matter.“, underlines Jérôme Di Valentin deploring the lack of maturity of certain LCAs.

Stand of Vizcab, a spin-off from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne which uses data sciences to catalyze the carbon transition of buildings, at SIMI 2024. © AP-Anne Moreaux

Only 20% of people questioned by the Vizcab survey know about European regulations (RE2020, CSRD, green taxonomy, EBPD). However, large companies want to express their carbon impact in their activity report. Regulatory issues drive this issue rather than certifications. In fact, the CSRD had a big impact on the carbon budget of companies for 73% of respondents.

The secret of success therefore lies inanticipationof the awareness and the formation engineers and developers on low carbon buildings. “Good practice is to do the strokes as soon as possiblefrom the sketch phases, before the filing of building permits”, insists the expert.

The average duration for carrying out an ACV is 7 days in France, and more like 5 days internationally.

Challenges of the building trades

The issue of environmental impact truly transforms building trades.Many professions have taken this subject seriously and carry out LCAs regularly, such as architects, building engineers, project directors or even CEOs of real estate companies.

“THE architects take the subject to heart thanks to their responsibility and professional insurance”, rejoices Jérôme Di Valentin adding that “the accommodation is at the heart of a social strategy and therefore a major carbon issue and this is where we have done the most progress”.

Improvements that promise to last thanks to awareness of stakeholders and to the democratization of AI which makes it possible to optimize LCA software and opens up a new field of possibilities in usual analyses.

Optimistic, the expert predicts “a step in 2025” and assures that “we can build as before but by optimizing our supply circuit”.