BREEAM Webinar:
Demystifying Carbon Emissions

On 8 April 2025, BRE kicked off its 2025 webinar series with Demystifying Carbon Emissions, chaired by Tom Wilson, BREEAM Science Lead, BRE. The session explored how BREEAM addresses the challenges of sustainability in the commercial real-estate market, touching on the key updates of BREEAM version 7 in relation to carbon emissions.

Tom Wilson, BREEAM Science Lead, BRE

"V7 is helping demystify carbon in the built environment. The update covers new construction, refurbishment, fit-out, and in-use, with a focus on carbon. The aim is to reduce barriers to understanding and make it easier for those investing or looking at building portfolios.

By measuring and reporting carbon consistently across new, refurbished, and existing buildings, it allows for more valid comparisons and makes it easier to understand the impact."

Robbie Epsom, EMEA Head of Sustainability, CBRE Investment Management

"Decarbonising the built environment presents a significant opportunity to enhance asset value and drive investment performance. Robust KPIs allow us to effectively measure progress and reduce operating costs, directly benefiting both investors through higher rental income, capital value protection, and lower vacancy rates and for occupiers via stable, low to potentially free energy pricing and reduced costs.

This win-win scenario attracts greater investment into sustainable real estate, contributing to a successful and valuable climate transition for our portfolios and their stakeholders."

Tim Wheeldon, Managing Director, Zeal Hotels

"Historically, constructing hotels was a straightforward two-dimensional equation: increase the specification, and costs would rise accordingly.

However, today, the equation has become three-dimensional, as we must consider Embodied Carbon & EUI. Aligning these four elements in a cost-effective and repeatable way has become a significant challenge. After about two years of design work, we've successfully managed to balance these factors."

Benoit Dubois-Taine, Associate, ECH Energie

"Numerous owners and occupants are willing to pay more for buildings with lower carbon footprints, even if it doesn't directly translate into lower energy costs. I've seen this in several instances.

The critical issue here is to have a reliable measure of carbon, allowing both robust assessment of progress, and proper arbitration between options, using as a criterion the cost of each tonne of CO2 avoided."