TÜV Rheinland's Pioneering Action on "Carbon Reduction in Buildings"

TSUEN WAN, Hong Kong - March 17, 2022 - PRLog -- TÜV Rheinland and BRE have jointly launched a net-zero carbon building certification evaluation system based on BREEAM, international greenhouse gas emission verification standards, China's greenhouse gas emission verification guidelines, as well as domestic and foreign building carbon footprint calculation standards and the TÜV Rheinland China Mark certification system. A complete set of golden assessment verification criteria has been presented, including verifying the total carbon emissions of a building throughout its life cycle, assessing the compliance and effectiveness of its carbon management process, and ensuring that the building achieves minimum carbon emissions and maximum resource utilization efficiency during its life cycle.

A building with net zero carbon emissions means the building is energy and resource efficient, powered by on-site or off-site renewable energy, and its residual emissions can be offset by carbon removals.

The net-zero carbon building certification created by TÜV Rheinland and BRE covers the embodied carbon emissions of building materials, operational carbon emissions during building operation (new buildings, existing buildings), and carbon emissions during the entire life cycle of buildings.

Among these, so-called "embodied carbon" refers to the building product supply chain, including energy consumption, chemical reactions, transportation, and installation/construction activities, and "operational carbon" refers to heating, cooling, and power supply during operation. The latest figures show that both emissions and energy demand from the global construction industry are increasing, making this a key target for carbon reduction efforts.

In order to help companies better standardize and effectively improve their management of carbon assets in buildings through certification, the certification application process for the Net Zero Carbon Building Evaluation System is clear:

After an enterprise determines the scope of application and submits the documents for self-application, TÜV Rheinland will complete the document review according to the material list provided by the applicant enterprise, conduct an on-site audit and on-site data sampling verification for existing buildings, and finally conduct an evaluation based on the audit results and the carbon emission calculation results. Applicants who meet the net-zero carbon or low-carbon operation criteria and pass the building carbon management process assessment will be awarded a net-zero carbon building certification certificate containing the keywords "net-zero carbon building" or "low-carbon operation."

The application process for pioneer project net zero carbon building certification has been officially launched, with the submission of application materials for the first batch of pioneer projects completed on January 15, entering the review stage. It is expected that the first batch of successful pilot projects will be officially announced in May, with the first batch of net zero carbon building certifications officially issued at that time.