Operational carbon has a shared pathway. Embodied carbon needs one too.
Investors across real estate use CRREM's pathways to benchmark operational carbon. For the carbon locked into materials and construction, there is no equivalent reference. Without one, competing proprietary frameworks multiply, claims become hard to verify, and new build keeps winning over retrofit.
Laudes Foundation wanted to fund a solution. It asked us to work out what that solution should be, and who should build it.
Everyone wanted pathways. No one meant the same thing.
We spoke to more than 20 technical partners, accountability bodies, investors and policy actors, and brought them together in four workshops. A clear theme emerged: "pathway" means an asset-level tool to some, an entity benchmark to others and a sector trajectory to the rest.
All three are needed, and they have to connect. Investors need asset-level detail, accountability bodies need entity-level assessment, and both depend on a sector-level trajectory grounded in science.
Finding clarity in a complex landscape.
We worked alongside Laudes Foundation throughout, testing emerging options with partners as we went. Each round of conversation narrowed the field, from a broad ambition to a first step that everyone could support.
That step is a keystone: a science-based reference methodology that later tools can build on. We then wrote the proposal to Laudes Foundation's Investment Committee, turning the shared picture into a programme of work.
interviews across technical, finance, accountability and policy actors
workshops building shared understanding
pathway levels: asset, entity and sector, designed to connect
keystone the foundation later tools build on
Stakeholders now have a clear view of what a pathway means at each level, and how the levels fit together.
A broad ambition became a scoped first phase that a funder could back with confidence.
Technical, accountability and investor partners know where the programme is heading, with roles ready to step into once delivery begins.
The keystone is designed so future tools, assessments and markets can build on it.