Embodied carbon and your office fit-out: a guide for occupiers

If your business is tracking its carbon footprint, your office fit-out is more relevant than you might think.  

Most carbon reporting focuses on the energy a building uses once it’s fully up and running, like heat, lighting and power. This day-to-day usage is known as operational carbon, and it’s an important metric. However, just as relevant (and often overlooked) is embodied carbon; an upfront spend that impacts your footprint before you’ve even moved in. 

This occupier’s guide will explain what embodied carbon is, why it’s appearing on occupier ESG reports, and the practical decisions you can make throughout your build process that reduce your impact without compromising your outcome.   

What ’embodied carbon’ actually means

Embodied carbon is the carbon emitted in the creation and movement of the materials, products and furniture that go into your space. 

Using the whole-life carbon stages set out in BS EN 15978, it can include raw material extraction, manufacturing, transport to site and installation. It also includes what happens at the other end of the project’s life, when a fit-out is stripped out, disposed of or reused. 

Whilst operational carbon builds slowly over years of use, embodied carbon is a large upfront spent that accumulates as soon as you start building; so, by the time your team moves in, a large part of the carbon story has already been written. 

This is not a small issue. Carbon emissions released before a built asset is used (referred to as “upfront carbon”) will be responsible for half of the entire carbon footprint of new construction between now and 2050.

That’s why the brief matters so much: early decisions have the biggest impact. 

Why it’s showing up in your ESG reports

More occupiers are being asked to account for the carbon connected to their workplaces, not just the energy used to run the building. 

The pressure comes from several directions at once: investor and board-level ESG commitments, supply-chain reporting requests from larger clients, and frameworks that increasingly expect whole-life carbon to be measured rather than estimated. 

The scrutiny can be explained by the scale of the problem. The built environment has a substantial environmental impact. Construction, renovation and demolition generate approximately one-third of the world’s waste, while buildings and construction account for around 37–40% of global energy- and process-related CO₂ emissions. In England, construction, demolition and excavation activities were responsible for approximately 64% of total waste generated in 2018, according to Defra.

For an occupier, the practical upshot of a carbon controlled fit-out is straightforward: an unmeasured, high-waste fit-out is a gap in your numbers. A considered, lower carbon one is a strategic choice you can rationalise. 

The easiest solution: reuse what you have

The simplest way to reduce embodied carbon is to avoid creating it in the first place. 

The lowest carbon material you can find is what you already have in your building. Before anything is removed or replaced, the questions worth asking are: 

• Can it stay where it is? 
• Can it be cleaned, repaired or refinished rather than replaced? 
• Can it be repurposed elsewhere in the space? 
• Can it be donated, resold or returned through a take-back scheme? 

These are not glamorous questions, but they are useful ones. They can save carbon, reduce waste and protect your budget.  

The other avenues to explore

Reuse does most of the work, but specification matters too: 

• Ask suppliers for the data. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) let you compare the embodied carbon of one product against another, so you can compare solutions and make informed choices. 
• Source locally where you can. A meaningful share of fit-out carbon is in the transport of the core materials. Choosing local suppliers and avoiding things like air freight cuts carbon output at source. 
• Choose durable over disposable. Choosing higher quality finishes that last twice as long will extend the life of your fit-out and halve how often carbon is spent. If you can, choose hard-wearing materials and flexible furniture. 
• Design for the next phase, not just this one. Adaptable layouts and modular furniture mean the space can adapt to changing teams and is less likely to require change, avoiding another round of fit-out waste and carbon accumulation. 

Build carbon awareness into your brief

Measuring embodied carbon at the end of a project may be useful for reporting, but it won’t make a difference to the outcome. Incorporating those measurements into the brief allows you to do something about it.  

Add carbon to the brief on day one and start by using what you already have as an inventory for deciding what can be reused, refurbished, or repurposed. If embodied carbon is going to appear in your reporting, design the project so the answer is one you’re happy to share.  

Looking for guidance?