My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 280. I thank my supporters, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Lansley. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her engagement with me on this issue over recent months and for her letter outlining the position of the Government.
I will focus on the changes to the amendment since we were in Committee, where we highlighted the magnitude of the issue of embodied carbon, with 50 million tonnes of CO2
equivalents a year—more than aviation and shipping combined, so it is a significant amount of emissions. When we consider the effort and investment that is going into some of these other areas, it points towards the need to do a lot more on embodied carbon.
We also set out that industry is ready. On an infrastructure-related bid that I am currently working on for the private sector, we are looking to set targets for embodied carbon and assess it in the design phase, something that we now do almost as a matter of course. However, regulation needs to catch up, to ensure that this is applied consistently and to seize the wider sustainability and economic benefits of this change applying across the whole of industry. Our amendment focuses purely on the initial reporting stage, whereby industry will be mandated to report embodied carbon for all new construction projects above a certain size; the subsequent stage,
using data gathered in the initial stage, would be to set out actual regulated limits for embodied carbon in buildings.
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In the short term, we need a few things. The first is a timeline for a consultation on embodied carbon reporting and regulation. I welcome the Government’s commitments to consulting in 2023. The amendment now includes a commitment on consultation timescales. Secondly, and most importantly, we need that signal of policy intent that is required from the Government: a date when that reporting phase will start so that industry can start preparations early and put the necessary processes in place. There is no reason why we cannot get on with this now. The Minister may say that this will all perhaps fall out of the consultation, but there is no reason why the Government cannot commit to an aspiration to a date now and invite comments on that within the consultation. That would be of enormous significance in helping to get things moving on this issue. This date could perhaps align with the future homes standards, due to the obvious crossover here. We have added this to the amendments. Thirdly, we need a timescale for the implementation of regulations following the reporting phases needed, again for a clear road map to be in place so that industry can plan for implementation.
Our amendment on Report now sets out a clear road map for implementation of embodied carbon reporting and regulation. The Government should seize the opportunity to progress with this now and realise the many benefits. It would mean alignment with many other countries which are already implementing regulations—France, Sweden, Denmark and others. There are also the efficiency benefits in aligning standards and assessment methodologies across industry. There are economic benefits too—for example, the development of new low-carbon building materials and reuse of buildings.