Quantifying the hidden embodied carbon gap in Turkish construction: A scenariobased assessment and policy roadmap

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Methodology for scenario-based embodied carbon assessment and the identification of the 'readiness paradox' offer a foundation for comparative studies in other contexts.

🏢実務担当者:Construction firms and material suppliers can use the scenario results to assess supply chain decarbonization opportunities and anticipate regulatory shifts toward mandatory whole-life carbon reporting.

🏛政策担当者:The phased regulatory roadmap—from disclosure to WLCA integration—provides a concrete pathway for aligning domestic building codes with EU EPBD and mitigating future carbon tax exposure.

Despite the ambitious 2053 net-zero targets, the Turkish construction regulatory framework remains predominantly focused on operational energy efficiency, leaving a critical hidden carbon gap regarding embodied emissions. This study evaluates the misalignment between national codes (BEP-TR) and international whole-life carbon principles by analyzing the material-related carbon gap of a typical residential building in Zonguldak. Using verified Bill of Quantities (BoQ) data, a scenario-based embodied carbon assessment was conducted across three trajectories: Pessimistic (Business-as-Usual), Baseline (Standard Practice), and Optimistic (Low-Carbon Transformation). The results reveal that current regulations ignore 249.0 kgCO₂e/m² of upfront embodied carbon in a standard code-compliant building, increasing to 256.0 kgCO₂e/m² when scenario-based end-of-life emissions (C1–C4) are included. The structural system alone accounts for 71.4% of these unregulated upfront emissions. Scenario analysis demonstrates an approximately 48.0% reduction potential between the pessimistic and optimistic supply-chain trajectories, confirming that material selection is as critical as design geometry in reducing embodied carbon. Notably, the Optimistic Scenario indicates that utilizing existing low-carbon technologies could reduce the upfront embodied carbon by 32.2% compared with the baseline without altering architectural practices. However, a readiness paradox exists in which advanced materials produced for EU CBAM compliance are not sufficiently incentivized in the domestic market due to legislative inertia. This study concludes by proposing a phased regulatory roadmap that begins with embodied carbon disclosure and progressively integrates mandatory WLCA reporting, thereby aligning the Turkish construction sector with the EU EPBD and improving economic resilience against future carbon taxes.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.31462/jcemi.2026.661first seen 2026-07-03 05:51:56