Where the carbon actually sits in a facade
Embodied carbon in a facade package is not just the skin. It is the skin, the secondary steel that holds it, the primary structure sized to carry both, the transport, and the replacement cycle over the building’s life. A material comparison that only counts the panel misses most of the number.
This is why strength to weight matters more than it first appears. A lighter facade needs less supporting steelwork, which in turn reduces the structural allowance in the frame, and fewer, lighter loads move on fewer trucks. The saving compounds backwards through the build.
Measured against aluminium
Measure |
ShapeShell™ Compared with Aluminium |
|---|---|
Greenhouse gas emission
|
Six times lower
|
Primary energy in production
|
Three times lower
|
Total environment impact
|
Half
|
Aluminium is the fair comparison for most architectural facade work, because it is the material a composite or GRC panel usually displaces. The gap comes from primary production: aluminium is energy intensive to smelt, while a fibre reinforced panel is cured rather than melted.
What to ask for in a tender
- Ask for the boundary. Cradle to gate and cradle to grave give very different answers. A supplier quoting a number without stating the boundary is quoting a marketing figure.
- Include the support system. Compare the whole facade build up, panel plus framing plus fixings, not the panel alone.
- Count the replacement cycle. A panel that is replaced once in sixty years carries twice the embodied carbon of one that is not.
- Check transport. Mass and volume both matter. A lighter, nestable panel moves at a different carbon cost to a dense one.
- Ask what documentation exists. If your project needs a formal EPD or a life cycle assessment to a specific standard, ask us what is currently available for the material in question rather than assuming.
Durability is a sustainability property
The most effective carbon reduction in a facade is not replacing it. Fibre reinforced panels do not carry reinforcing steel, so the corrosion mechanism that drives spalling and replacement in conventional reinforced concrete is absent. In coastal and high exposure locations that is the difference between a facade that is cleaned and one that is rebuilt.