How to decarbonize Housing without knowing your carbon footprint - Practical tools for low-carbon housing

The global south will be responsible for the bulk of the construction in the next decades. Decarbonization housing construction is, therefore, a top global priority. Because the climate and the income, more than ¾ of the carbon is embodied and emitted upfront, which amplifies the impact on climate. A major obstacle is the lack of standardized and verifiable information regarding the carbon footprint of the local produced materials and construction. A common practice is to design policies emphasizing mitigation by materials substitution by low carbon versions derived from imported carbon values, that not necessarily reflects the local reality. This is consequential: a wrong indicator will not result in optimal mitigation. Additionally, the preferable materials usually become more expensive, due to incentivized demand, which limiting scalability and may be not socially sustainable. This WUF Academy training presents a practical and accessible approach to housing decarbonization by dematerialization achieved by data-driven iterative design optimization. Because less material means less carbon and, therefore, lower cost, dematerialization is a cost negative strategy, which is a must within the realities of the Global South. It is scalable because can be applied to any construction technology. Materials choices, comes after. It needs to be inexpensive, fast, and effective. USP, in partnership with Caixa, developed the Benchmark Iterative Platform for Low Carbon Projects (BIPc), a tool that meets these requirements and will be deployed nation-wide. The training combines a short conceptual introduction with interactive components, including quizzes and group-based scenario exercises. Using the data already in the BIPc platform, we will demonstrate the mitigation potential of dematerialization for different building construction technologies. Participants will be able to explore the BIPc tool to understand how it drives dematerialization by guiding early-stage project decisions. The session emphasizes affordability, scalability, and applicability to housing policies, programmes, and projects in emerging and developing contexts.