Developed by the sector – comprising of developers, manufacturers and whole life carbon experts – the Future Homes Hub Whole Life Carbon Conventions for New Homes aim to help businesses across the sector share and report whole life carbon assessments on a consistent basis.
The WLC Conventions for new homes:
- Provide a consistent set of generic carbon impact factors for materials and product-types commonly used in new homes – for use at early design stages.
- Define clear ‘standard scopes’ for lifecycle stages and building elements across various levels of assessment.
- Adopt a consistent approach to calculate location-specific regulated and unregulated energy consumption, based on outputs from SAP assessment.
- Define a reporting format that requires transparency of assumptions, including the quantity, material and whole life cycle assumptions used.
The Conventions reference the same core methodology defined by EN 15978 and RICS PS 2023 and can be used with any commercial assessment tool.
Download the guide and supporting materials to find out more.
Pre-calculators for regulated and unregulated energy demand
For those producing WLC assessments aligned with the Conventions for New Homes, two pre-calculator tools have been developed:
Regulated Energy: this helps to extract exactly the right information from a SAP 10.2 output sheet to calculate annual regulated energy consumption for gas and electricity based on location-specific weather data. (kWh/year)
Unregulated Energy: this calculates annual energy consumption from unregulated uses (cooking and appliances) according to the Conventions for New Homes. Not required if using Hub tool as this is built in.
Click here to find out more about the Future Homes Hub’s work on embodied and whole life carbon.