Dato ’ Seri Johan Raslan

Roundtable 1 ; Reducing embodied carbon in built environment .

BY FATIHAH MANAF

Climate Governance Malaysia ( CGM ) and CEO Action Network ( CAN ) organised roundtable discussions involving the property and construction sector in July 2021 to address this issue .

The first session discussed the strategies for embodied carbon reduction in the built environment , while the second session focused on reducing operational carbon in the built environment .

In his welcome note , Dato ’ Seri Johan Raslan , the founding member of CGM and the steering committee member of CAN stated that companies need clear and predictable government policies in effectively moving the industry forward on climate action .

The first roundtable discussion was held on July 12 , 2021 , moderated by Gregers Reimann , the managing director of IEN consultants , a pioneering green building consultancy in Malaysia .

The first session participants were then engaged with insightful presentations from four panellists , namely Darshan Joshi , Ir M Ramuseren , Ir Yasotha Chetty and Dr Foo Chee Hung .

Carbon pricing as climate action toolkit

Darshan , an analyst from the Institute of Strategic and International Studies ( ISIS ) Malaysia , argued : “ Carbon pricing is a fundamental enabling policy within the climate action toolkit .”

On carbon pricing rates , Darshan said : “ The first best global policy would be a uniform global price on carbon .”

He said , for starters , countries could adopt prices that trend towards this global

price of carbon .

“ Get accustomed to functioning in the presence of carbon tax , and that ’ ll make any future shift to a global price , if it were to happen , any smoother ,” said the analyst .

He also highlighted that the carbon price couldn ’ t be too high as it would be politically infeasible and cause economic harm . It couldn ’ t be too low as it would not incentivise decarbonisation .

GHG emissions in Malaysian construction industry

Ramuseren , general manager at Construction Industry Development Board ( CIDB ) Malaysia , then shared the study conducted by the organisation to estimate GHG emissions in the construction industry .

From the study , Ramuseren shared the average GHG emissions per year from the construction process in Malaysia was about 76 million tCO2eq , 90 per cent coming from manufacturing , three per cent from transportation and only seven per cent from the construction activities .

“ If we don ’ t do anything , if the status quo remains , no change , no further action on new policies or incentives such as tax , you can expect in the next 30 years , in 2050 , it ’ s going to increase to 92 per cent ,” said Ramuseren .

According to the study , the embodied carbon would contribute to about 89 per cent of the total number .

The study also came out with recommendations on incentives and

disincentives for the consideration of the Malaysian government . Some of the incentives are tax incentives for GHG reporting , low carbon funds and incentives for construction materials .

Meanwhile , the disincentives are carbon tax , mandatory GHG reporting , cap-and-trade system and mandating the use of low carbon building materials .

Structural engineer Yasotha , who is also the founder of OHR Engineering , shared that 38 per cent of global CO2 emissions came from the buildings industry , of which 26 per cent was embodied carbon .

“ This is an average figure . Depending on the type of buildings , the value could vary from 30 to 70 per cent .”

She elaborated that Malaysia consumed 21.65 megatons of cement in 2016 , which produced 19.5 MTCO2Eq , almost 10 per cent of Malaysia ’ s carbon emissions .

Yasotha then laid out some considerations for reducing embodied carbon impacts of structural building materials , such as reusing materials , selecting lower embodied carbon and adopting leaner designs .

Challenges in IBS adoption

Foo , a professional technologist who is also a manager at MKH Berhad , shared that developers faced some challenges in reducing the embodied carbon .

Developers need to consider regulatory compliance , consumers ’ perception and acceptance level , and cost in using alternative building materials . In addition , there were also some issues of inefficient Industrialised Building System ( IBS ) ecosystem and mismatch of incentives .

He shared developers were not keen on using IBS because of the cost issues . Until this was fixed , developers would continue to opt for conventional construction .

He then recommended that policymakers revise building code and bylaws and introduce tax deduction and nonmonetary incentives for projects with an IBS score of more than 70 .

EE initiatives to reduce operational carbon

The second roundtable discussion then convened on July 16 , 2021 . The session was moderated by Ar Serina Hijjas , the Vice President of Malaysia Green Building Council ( MGBC ). It featured four panellists — Zulkiflee Umar , Ar Zulkifli Zahari , Davis Chong and Ong Pang Yen .

As mentioned in the first roundtable discussion , the building and construction sector is responsible for 38 per cent of global carbon emissions . The 28 per cent comes from operational carbon whilst 10 per cent comes from embodied carbon .

“ Covering 28 per cent of this operational carbon is energy efficiency ( EE ) and renewable energy ( RE ),” said Serena .

She shared that in reducing carbon emissions of buildings , the way forward was to lower the energy first and then add