In July 2024, Construction Information Ltd (CIL) and the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ) announced a partnership to develop a national online resource of carbon data for construction materials and products. This new industry-led initiative is focussed on reducing the environmental impact of New Zealand’s buildings, which contribute up to 20% of the national carbon footprint.
This free and authoritative data repository will play a crucial role in the effort to combat climate change by enabling transparency, fostering collaboration, and providing data-driven insights for carbon management in New Zealand. The NZ Construction industry will be empowered to make environmentally responsible decisions regarding their building designs and material selections while working towards achieving New Zealand’s future zero-carbon targets. This joint initiative is supported by New Zealand Institute of Architects, Master Builders and endorsed by Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
eCert Tool
The first step on our journey has been the launch of eCert on 04 November 2024, a powerful tool integrated into the Masterspec platform that allows specifiers to compare up to four sustainability certifications from building product suppliers. By providing a centralised and maintained platform for accessing and analysing this information, eCert simplifies the process of evaluating product sustainability and selecting the most appropriate options for your projects.
eCert currently supports the following certifications:
- Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)
- Declare
- Toitū
- Eco Choice
- GreenTag
- Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
- Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)
For more information about eCert, click here →
The NZ Embodied Carbon Data Repository
The data underpinning this initiative has been manually collated and verified by BRANZ since 2012. Since July 2024, BRANZ have been working hard updating this Carbon dataset, incorporating new information and working alongside the CIL/ Masterspec team to support the data understanding to allow CIL to commence the design of the underlying database for the National Embodied Carbon Data Repository.
We are also establishing how CIL’s team of editors and Architects will work to replicate and assume responsibility for the processes of managing updates from product manufacturers and suppliers and aligning with best international data management practices.
This discovery and design phase should be complete soon and represents the second of five stages to realise a fully publicly available carbon data service, as outlined in the presentations at the Beehive on the 18th July 2024.
In 2025, CIL will assume direct responsibility for accepting data updates. We will then commence the build of the public access and look-up software systems. The last stages will be publishing machine-to-machine tools that allow calculators and BIM tools to interface with the database directly and help organisations manage and reduce the environmental impact of New Zealand’s buildings.