Achieving Net-Zero Carbon Emissions in Construction Supply Chains
About this book
Achieving Net-Zero Carbon Emissions in Construction Supply Chains, authored by Ida Karlsson and colleagues and published by Routledge in 2023, addresses one of the most technically and organisationally complex challenges in sustainable construction: the decarbonisation of the upstream supply chains that produce the materials, products, and services consumed by the building and civil infrastructure sectors. Drawing on a substantial body of research developed primarily at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, the book offers a rigorous, evidence-based analysis of the pathways through which construction supply chains can progress from current high-emission baselines toward net-zero targets aligned with the Paris Agreement. The book's opening chapters establish the scale of the problem with quantitative clarity.
The construction sector and its associated supply chains are responsible for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions, the majority of which arise not from energy use in completed buildings but from the extraction, processing, and transport of materials — particularly steel, cement, and aggregates. These embodied carbon emissions, classified under Scope 3 in greenhouse gas accounting frameworks, are largely invisible to conventional procurement and project management processes, which have historically focused on direct operational costs and onsite performance rather than upstream carbon intensity. The authors argue that the persistent focus on operational energy efficiency in building regulation, while important, has diverted policy and industry attention from the embodied carbon challenge, which now represents the dominant share of lifetime emissions in highly energy-efficient buildings.
Karlsson and her co-authors devote considerable attention to the methodological foundations of embodied carbon accounting. The book examines the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to construction supply chains, discussing system boundary definitions, data quality challenges, and the treatment of biogenic carbon in timber-intensive systems. It contrasts whole-life carbon thinking — which integrates both operational and embodied emissions across a building's full lifetime — with the narrower approaches still prevalent in much of industry, arguing that robust Scope 3 accounting is a precondition for genuine decarbonisation at the portfolio level.
The treatment of carbon sequestration claims, the handling of recycled content, and the distinction between fossil and biogenic emissions are all addressed with methodological precision. A central contribution of the book is its multidimensional analysis of decarbonisation pathways. The authors identify and evaluate a set of interdependent levers spanning materials substitution, design efficiency, construction processes, and procurement strategy.
On the materials side, the book examines the role of low-carbon alternatives — green hydrogen-based steel, supplementary cementitious materials replacing clinker in cement, mass timber and engineered wood products — and critically assesses both the technical maturity and the current supply capacity of these options. The finding that near-term decarbonisation is technically feasible with existing best available technologies, but constrained by supply chain investment cycles and economic incentives, is central to the analysis and has direct implications for the timing and ambition of policy interventions. Procurement is identified as a pivotal but underutilised mechanism for driving supply chain change.
The book argues that public and private clients who specify low-carbon materials in tender documents and weight environmental performance in contract awards can generate sustained market demand for clean supply chains — a demand signal that producers of low-carbon materials and construction services need to justify investment in decarbonisation. The authors examine how environmental product declarations (EPDs), carbon caps in specifications, and whole-life costing criteria can be embedded in procurement practice, and they assess the barriers — including data availability gaps, contractor risk aversion, and limited client technical capacity — that currently prevent wider adoption. The book engages directly with the policy landscape, analysing how regulatory instruments — carbon pricing mechanisms, mandatory embodied carbon reporting in building permits, and minimum performance standards in building codes — compare with voluntary market mechanisms as drivers of supply chain transformation.
Public procurement is highlighted as a uniquely powerful policy lever, given that governments represent major clients in the construction sector and can use procurement volume to create pipeline certainty for manufacturers investing in low-carbon production processes. The Swedish and broader European contexts are used throughout to draw lessons applicable across different regulatory environments, while a series of case studies on residential buildings and transport infrastructure illustrate the practical application of the analytical frameworks developed in the text. The concluding sections synthesise the research into a strategic framework for practitioners — project developers, contractors, material specifiers, and procurement officers — who are seeking to translate net-zero commitments into operational supply chain decisions.
This book is essential reading for construction professionals, policymakers, and researchers working on the embodied carbon agenda.