A summary of our joint ASBP and ISOBIO event

Kindly hosted by Dr Callum Hill at Bath University

Callum introduced the day with an overview of the ISOBIO project, a €6m 4 year project, which commenced 2015. Callum is leading WP8, which is leading on the LCA analysis of embodied energy. He explained that this was best expressed as a functional unit, in this instance thermal conductivity, in order to make comparisons between products. He has been analysing the life cycle information and EPDs of various insulation products. His slides and those from the following speakers, will be available shortly from the project website; http://isobioproject.com

We then had a presentation from Finlay White, Modcell. Finlay White described the success of the strawbale houses in Bristol and Haysfield School, Lilac and the Bale House in Bath.

Oliver Style, Progetic: Larixhaus. Oliver introduced a Passivhaus strawbale/timber frame house in Barcelona. It took two days to build and 3 weeks to airtightness test, certified 2015. With summer temperatures often over 38 C but with cold winters, he detailed the build and subsequent modelling, which showed very comfortable interior conditions, no overheating, with an annual energy bill of €74.

14,00 Dr Jannik Giesekam, CIEMAP Leeds University; Embodied carbon and strategies for reduction

Jannik described the CIEMAP project and their focus upon embodied carbon and strategies for reduction in the construction industry. He showed that UK is not meeting its targets for embodied carbon reductions from UK construction and that by 2025 embodied carbon will be the largest contributor to UK carbon footprint that is not regulated and so suggested that legislation will inevitably be forthcoming. Please see his slides and published research here: http://www.jannikgiesekam.co.uk/

14.30 Simon Corbey, ASBP: Steel reuse

Simon introduced slides from across the project teams detailing progress and some conclusions from two Innovate UK projects on steel reuse 132064 and 132106.

He detailed the project task to calculate the embodied carbon for the steel used in 2012 refurbishment of Cullinan Studio/ ASBP offices and modelling the savings if various % of the steel was reused. He explained that this was proving much more complex than first thought, with a wide spread of numbers for new steel proposed by actors. Of particular concern was an update from World Steel/ Tata prepared for SCI which conflates the A1 cradle to gate impact with the Module D recycling credit together, thus suggesting that the embodied carbon of 1T steel is just under 1 T of CO2. This is not EN15804 compliant but apparently does comply with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. In addition this methodology doesn’t differentiate between Basic Oxygen Furnace and Electric Arc Furnace. Simon suggested that he has tabled an item for discussion at the ASBP board 22/9 to discuss a response. Please see accompanying slides on the Resource section of our website.

15.00 Gary Newman, ASBP: Strategies for carbon reduction

Gary introduced the numbers and opportunities behind carbon sequestration. He then introduced Goodheart’s Law – All economic models break down when used for policy.

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

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