World Green Building Week (WGBW; September 23-29) is an annual campaign to raise awareness of how the built environment can achieve a range of global goals such as mitigating climate change and creating both sustainable communities and economic growth. The World Green Building Council (WGBC) states that the construction of buildings is responsible for around 39% of carbon emissions, with 28% of these from heating, cooling and supplying power while 11% are attributed to embodied carbon in materials and construction processes.

Considering the climate emergency declaration, the challenge to all clients and designers is to place sustainability in its broadest sense at the heart of their projects. The many facets of a project’s carbon story include construction, the building in use and embodied carbon. These elements should form the headline, but we must also look beyond that to include collective social benefit, prosperity and community aspects.

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