Current life cycle carbon guidance was never designed for domestic retrofit. A new framework aims to change that – and to enable the impact of retrofit to be determined in terms of carbon and energy – as Dr Lois Hurst explains, in the third part of her series of articles on whole life carbon.

Life cycle assessments are crucial for sustainable building design, but understanding their inherent limitations is key to making better decisions with imperfect data, writes Dr Lois Hurst.

With an increasing emphasis on the electrification of heat as the electricity grid decarbonises, interest in reducing the embodied carbon of buildings is growing. But does a focus on embodied carbon alone risk giving needlessly energy intensive ways of making buildings a free pass? In the first of a new series of articles, Dr Lois Hurst journeys into understanding embodied and life cycle impacts in construction.