Aligned with the guide, IStructE has also updated its Structural Carbon Tool, developed in collaboration with Elliott Wood. This Excel-based interactive resource helps engineers, building designers, and architects estimate the embodied carbon in their structures.

IStructE highlights that achieving net zero carbon by 2050, with a halving of emissions by 2030, demands a significant, but achievable, change across the design, construction, use, and reuse of buildings and infrastructure.

A key part of this evolution is for structural engineers to ensure the calculation of embodied carbon is a key driver in their building and structural designs. This helps the engineer understand the carbon savings available through reusing existing buildings rather than building anew – an approach the IStructE advises as “critical” if the industry is to decarbonise.

The guide was written by Orlando Gibbons, Senior Engineer and Embodied Carbon Specialist, Arup; John Orr, Professor of Structural Engineering, University of Cambridge; and Will Arnold, Head of Climate Action, IStructE. The Structural Carbon Tool was developed by Elliott Wood for publication through the IStructE, to complement the guide. Both the guide and tool cover new and existing buildings, bridges, and other structures.

They provide a common set of embodied carbon calculation principles for the structural engineering community to follow, with examples to help deliver clear outcomes, an explanation of terminology, and a series of ‘must-haves’ including:

• Recognise carbon as one component of sustainability
• Evaluate design decisions against their carbon impact
• Communicate carbon insights to project teams and clients
• Advocate and engage the project team to find ways to reduce carbon impacts
• Report module-based carbon data to an open-source database.

Will Arnold, head of climate action at IStructE, said: “It is important that structural engineers realise the impact our work has on the climate. For a new home built in the UK, research shows that over half of that building’s lifetime emissions are due to the use of construction materials.

“As we argue in the guide, significant change across the design, construction, use and reuse of buildings and infrastructure are needed if we are to have any chance of providing a sustainable environment for the whole of humanity, and this can only happen if we first understand the emissions of our designs. These updates to our guide and tool help engineers and other professionals to calculate these emissions quickly and consistently.”

Dr Mike Cook, chair of the IStructE’s Climate Emergency Task Group, says in the guide’s foreword: “Since the publication of the first edition in 2020, the need for structural engineers to reduce the harm that the manufacture and disposal of construction materials causes to our planet’s ecosystem has become even clearer.

“To do this, the first step is to reduce the embodied carbon of the structures we design. This need is becoming increasingly urgent, and the consequences of failure are increasingly alarming.”

Speaking about the Structural Carbon Tool, Gary Elliott from Elliott Wood concluded: “Our industry must move beyond simply being ‘less bad’ to becoming a force for good. The third edition of the Structural Carbon Tool, developed by us in collaboration with the IStructE, is a free resource designed to drive this collective shift. Empowering structural engineers and designers to make informed decisions and reduce carbon used in construction.”