CIBSE President Adrian Catchpole to speak at COP28 on climate resilience and embodied carbon
Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) President Adrian Catchpole is to speak at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, in Dubai. He will use his address to focus on the need for buildings to be designed to be climate-resilient and on the need to reduce embodied carbon.
Catchpole will say that climate change is already having an impact on the built environment and that buildings and building services need to be designed to be resilient and to maintain occupant health and comfort as global temperatures continue to rise.
His speech will include a call for the construction industry to address the vulnerability of buildings and the built environment to climate change.
Catchpole’s address will also highlight the need to reduce the embodied carbon of building services equipment, alongside the continued drive to reduce operational carbon, in order to achieve net zero carbon cities.
Embodied carbon includes the carbon emissions released during the manufacture, transportation, construction, maintenance and end of life phases of building services plant and equipment. In his address, Catchpole will call for a consistent global methodology in the way embodied carbon is calculated for building services.
CIBSE is a global leader on the assessment of carbon embodied in building services. Catchpole’s presentation will reference CIBSE TM65 methodology, which is set to become the global standard for estimating the carbon embodied in building services equipment and is supported by a guide for applying the TM65 methodology outside of the UK.
CIBSE will use the opportunity of COP28 taking place in Dubai to launch a United Arab Emirates addendum to TM65. The publication of the UAE addendum follows on from the Australia and New Zealand addendum, published in 2022. CIBSE is set to publish further addenda covering America and Hong Kong in 2024.
The topics for Catchpole’s address follows on from his presidential theme on the need for engineers to take the lead in decarbonising the building stock and delivering a response to climate change.
CIBSE’s presence at COP28 demonstrates the significance of the Institution and its membership, both in the UK and increasingly overseas, in reducing both operational and embodied carbon emissions of building services in tackling climate change.
While in Dubai, Catchpole will also be presenting on his twin themes of resilience and embodied carbon at both Heriot Watt and Birmingham Universities, both of which have a campus in the Emirate.
COP28 takes place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November to 12 December. 160 world leaders and an expected 70,000 delegates will come together to assess progress in curbing greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.