Sustainable by design: A blueprint for sourcing green building materials
- Media Manager
- Jan 10, 2024
- 1 min read
Roughly one-fifth of infrastructure and building emissions comes from steel and cement production alone. To address this challenge, we’ve developed a sustainable framework for procuring green materials—a critical step in the pursuit of net zero.
PWC
Written By: Richard Abadie, Carlos Mendes, Jürgen Peterseim and Shree Kumar Rakshit
Published: January 10th, 2024
Photo Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
In today’s rapidly urbanising world, where environmental consciousness is at an all-time high, the owners and developers of infrastructure and buildings face a monumental challenge: how to build the future sustainably while ensuring value for money. One answer lies in adopting a comprehensive framework for the sustainable procurement of green building materials.
Construction materials have long been deemed “hard to abate” when it comes to reducing carbon emissions associated with their creation and use. Modern-day cement and steel, the cornerstones of the built environment since the 19th century, are carbon intensive in terms of the raw materials and fuel required to produce them. Cement and steel production generate 2.3 billion and 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, respectively, according to the International Energy Agency. These figures are set to rise dramatically. By 2050, the United Nations estimates that more than 80% of the world’s population will live in cities, a trend that will effectively double the current demand for building materials.
