Within the same time period, significant new construction ("It is estimated that 3.5M new houses need to be built by 2031 to accommodate an expected 5.5% increase in the UK's population," p.3) stands to create large quantities of embodied GHG emissions. Embodied emissions related to the transport and production of materials used in buildings and infrastructure can be reduced through material reduction and optimization in design, reuse, and replacement with low-carbon, zero carbon, or carbon-sequestering materials. Between now and 2050 it will be critical to reduce and eventually eliminate both operational and embodied emissions. As electricity sources become heavily renewable, the transition to electric heating for buildings (rather than onsite use of oil or gas) will reduce the GHG intensity of heating. [Case for GSHPs]
Building on the premise of the SaFEGround project-that "the combined use of advanced heat-pump technologies and of the thermal capacity of the ground and thermo-active geostructures (TAGs) can markedly reduce system costs, operating expenses, reduce emissions, and improve the stability of the UK power system in deep decarbonisation scenarios"-and the need for embodied emissions reductions in tandem with operational decarbonisation, the project will explore opportunities for the stabilisation and storage capabilities introduced by GSHPs and TAGS to support embodied carbon reduction external to the heating system-at the scale of the building, neighborhood, and city. Also, it will explore opportunities to align and co-design policies aimed at increasing widespread deployment of GSHPs and TAGs with policies aimed at reducing embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure. Moreover, the project will use Life Cycle Analysis to make a holistic impact assessment of TAGs in the UK in the context of city and national scale energy needs and material resource flows. Also, this study will evaluate the material resource intensity of improved TAGs, environmental impacts of material and technological innovations in TAGs resulting from demand for minerals and materials, as well as energy use and emissions resulting from the construction stage, in addition to the evaluation of the material resources intensity of improved TAGs. The expected outcomes of the project are: (1) Develop LCA of improved TAGS (2) Understand material sources, demand, and supply chain analysis (3) Link above to: need for skilled labor and workforce development, land use impacts, long-term impacts of shifting reliance toward local and decentralised energy sources and storage and (4) Evaluate/suggest possibilities for alignment of material and technological innovations with building sector decarbonization policies and initiatives, city and national decarbonization goals, and climate commitments.