Lloyd Alter explains the term upfront carbon, its relevance to us all as consumers, and why he felt compelled to write a book on the topic.
Interview with Lloyd Alter
In 2021, Lloyd released his book Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle, where he attempted to limit his carbon emissions in line with what climate scientists say would be needed to keep within 1.5 degrees of global warming. Lloyd took on this challenge just as the Covid-19 pandemic struck and therefore it might have been slightly easier than normal because big emission activities such as flying were restricted. After completing a year living within this carbon budget, Lloyd stopped carbon counting. Habits that stuck include eating more vegetarian meals each week, using his e-bike instead of his car as much as possible, and not buying gadgets on a whim. The trickiest part for him has been air travel and he has taken a few flights since.
After examining the power of our personal choices Lloyd’s latest release focuses on our obsession with stuff! In his new book, The Story of Upfront Carbon: How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate Crisis, Lloyd explores the carbon emissions linked to everything we purchase as consumers.
“If you buy a car you’re buying 14 tonnes of upfront carbon emissions, the emissions of making that car. Everything you buy has these issues and people would talk about efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. But efficiency is pointless without sufficiency.”
What is upfront carbon?
When it comes to producing products a common phrase used to describe carbon emissions (or greenhouse gas equivalent emissions) is ’embodied carbon’. However, the word embodied is misleading in this context as it seems like it is describing a positive process of carbon sequestration rather than a harmful process of emissions. Lloyd, alongside Elrond Burrell and Jorg Chapa started thinking if it could be described more accurately and came up with ‘upfront carbon’. This term clearly highlights to the consumer what the carbon cost has been to create a product up until the point of purchase.
Upfront carbon refers to the first 5 stages of the life cycle (production and construction) from A1 to A5 which goes from the mining of materials right up to the use stage. It can be difficult to find accurate information within different aspects of the supply chain which makes most calculations an estimate rather than a certainty. Lloyd highlights that in spite of this uncertainty, it is always a good idea to use as little resources as possible as this will reduce the upfront carbon. It is also important to focus on items that use less processed materials because the upfront carbon will be significantly lower, so a wooden pencil rather than a metal mechanical one, or straw insulation over foam.
“The ultimate thing is just how much of everything are we using”
Upfront carbon is a good place to start but can’t be the end
Upfront carbon tells us a story about the production process of that object and can highlight the impact that the mere existence of the product has on our planet. However, with many of the things we buy, we will also generate carbon emissions when we use or maintain them. The easiest example of this is a car, which comes with approximately 14 tonnes of upfront carbon, but if that car has a petrol engine with poor fuel efficiency, the carbon emissions will be ongoing. It is therefore important to be looking at both the upfront carbon and the entire lifecycle of the product, in order to understand its impact and determine whether it is worth purchasing in the first place and how best to manage it.
“I had a student who actually analysed a pencil for her class. It was a brilliant, brilliant examination because the Staedtler pencil was made in Nuremberg, from clay from Pennsylvania and graphite from Turkey and cedar from California. And all of these things came together in a pencil in Nuremberg, which was shipped to the store in Aurora, Ontario, North of Toronto. But the carbon emissions from her driving to the store and bringing it home were twice as big as the whole manufacture of the pencil and shipping everything all over the world.”
Buy good quality things and maintain them for as long as possible
Every time you buy something new it comes with upfront carbon. Every year you can make that product last, you are amortising that upfront carbon over a longer period and it will be getting less and less. Lloyd highlights this as the simplest method for reducing your carbon emissions and by breaking that consumerist mindset, you will be taking a large step towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
Use materials that have been processed less
Lloyd highlights that another way to ensure you are reducing your upfront carbon is to use natural materials where possible. The majority of building products that have been highly processed will have extremely high upfront carbon, items like foam insulation or concrete. Lloyd uses an example from Steve Webb:
“He said, how do you make concrete? You take limestone, you grind it up into a powder, you put it in a kiln at 1450°C. You then mix it with a bit of clay and aggregate to make what is basically artificial stone. So if I go to a quarry, cut out the limestone, cut it into blocks, drill a hole and put a cable through it as reinforcement, I can make a beam out of stone that is stronger than the beam out of concrete with a 10th of the upfront carbon emissions and it will last five times as long. I said why aren’t we doing this? Making concrete is perverse.”
Constructing Old Holloway with EcoCocon panels
Simpler designs will use less
Minimally processed materials must be used in the most efficient way and all while keeping a check on the scale of things. Lloyd indicates that there is often a misconception that if wood sequesters carbon, then using as much as possible can only be a good thing. However, this negates the fact that wood is a precious resource and whilst it is a great natural building material with low upfront carbon, it should be used as efficiently as possible within the structure.
While much of the design world ignores the wisdom of optimising, the path is clear. For example, for larger timber buildings they would be simple and boxy, and limited in height to around 6 storeys. The buildings would have flat facades and fairly small windows.
“We should stop this insane competition to be the tallest wood building in the world. You don’t want to be the tallest wood building, because then the columns are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you’re putting in more and more fibre. And you’ve got to deal with harder fire regulations and all of these things.”
Finding out accurate information about the upfront carbon can be difficult
You cannot accurately measure the upfront carbon of wood because every tree is different and unique. The most important thing you can do is make sure you only use FSC certified timber.
Both high energy efficiency and low upfront carbon must be prioritised
The construction space can be filled with confusing examples. Many of the first really efficient houses used foam insulations with huge amounts of upfront carbon, so whilst carbon emissions were reduced on a day to day basis, they were significant during construction. An opposing argument has been raised from within the eco build community, where natural building materials with low upfront carbon have been prioritised whilst the need for energy efficiency has been questioned. Lloyd believes that both must be considered equally to ensure that our homes are as sustainable as possible whilst also providing comfort and security.
There may be emissions from heat pumps
The refrigerants used in heat pumps often contain harmful greenhouse gases and so if the heat pump isn’t installed correctly they may leak. There are now some heat pumps that claim to use ‘natural’ refrigerants but in reality they are still fossil fuels, just natural gasses rather than fluorocarbons. The ‘natural’ heat pump is a much less harmful version and should definitely be prioritised where possible, but it is not necessarily emission free. Because of this nuance, once again, it is important that the spaces we are designing are modest to ensure that we can keep the size of our heat pump down and therefore reduce the associated emissions.
Copyright by Evelyne Bouchard
We need to design with grid intermittency in mind
Lloyd highlights that there is a growing need to design buildings with future grid intermittency in mind. This would include low carbon, well insulated and efficient shells in order to maintain indoor temperature in the possibility of power cuts. With a need to move towards more and more renewable energy sources, it is important that we anticipate the potential issues that could arise and plan around them. Lloyd highlighted a potential to connect up car batteries to houses in order to utilise each of our resources to the max.
“The thing about this new world we’re getting into where we’re relying on renewables for everything is that renewables are intermittent… We have to design our houses to be really, really efficient so that if the heat goes off for an hour, and the hot water heater goes off, you don’t notice it.”
Cultural shifts can cause a ripple effect that increases our carbon emissions
Lloyd uses the example of the hamburger as a cultural ripple effect. The rise of fast food and drive thrus has created a culture around eating inside our cars. As a result car manufacturers began to add in features such as tray tables and cup holders to make this experience easier for the consumer. As years go by, these features increase and the overall size of cars increase too as a response to the amount of time we are spending in them. All of these increases go far beyond sufficiency and enter the world of excess, where every extra feature and every extra inch of space is adding to the upfront carbon of the car. This is a great example of how our cultural and consumerist influences cause these ripple effects that amplify our impact on the climate at every stage.
Copyright Looney Tunes
‘Visualising’ the carbon may help us grasp its impact
Lloyd spent a long time deciding on the best metric of measuring upfront carbon and eventually settled on Wile E. Coyote’s biggest threat, an anvil. It can be difficult to grasp the real impact of upfront carbon when it is measured in pounds or kilograms. Therefore being able to say that the production of a Macbook Air took an anvil and a half of carbon or that a watch was half an anvil can be a really valuable image to help people understand the true impacts of their possessions.
Could a ‘carbon allowance’ be the answer to sufficiency?
Lloyd suggests that carbon rationing could be a good strategy to help reduce carbon emissions. Everyone would be allowed the same, whether that’s by year or by lifetime, and from there they are free to decide what to spend their allowance on. The idea is that the consumer would be encouraged to reflect on the impacts of the products they buy and the choices they make.
“So if you’re building lower cost housing, you could maybe say slightly lower standard because it’s small. But if someone wants to build 500 square metres and has the same carbon allowance, they’re going to have to really be careful and they’re going to have to build it to a really high standard. And then if you start saying oh, by the way, you’re only allowed to have this much carbon allowance to build your whole house. Well, then they’re suddenly going to be looking at saying the only way I can build my mansion is if I build it out of straw and hemp on woodpile foundations.”
Sufficiency, sufficiency, sufficiency: how much do you really need?
“In this new world of upfront carbon, we have to turn that on its head and start thinking about sufficiency. How much do we need? And this goes through everything. How much clothing do I need? How much food should I be buying? How big is my car? Do I need a car? How big is my house? Everything we do we should look at it. And I often say when you look at the world through the lens of upfront carbon, everything changes. You just start thinking differently about everything you do and everything you buy.”
Find out more
Get your copy of The Story of Upfront Carbon
Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle
Key decisions that impact on the sustainability of a house build
Worldwide trends in green design
Transcript
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