Decarbonizing capital projects: Industry-wide insights on drivers, goals, strategies, and barriers

The last two decades have witnessed an increasing interest in decarbonizing the construction sector. However, existing literature focuses heavily on residential and commercial buildings, with little attention on capital projects such as industrial facilities, energy generation plants, and civil infrastructure. This study aims to capture the current landscape for decarbonizing the delivery of capital projects, assessing current decarbonization drivers, goals, strategies, and challenges. To achieve this objective, the research proposes a mixed-methods approach that obtains insights from industry practitioners through structured surveys and semi-structured interviews. The results indicate a strong commitment in the sector towards reducing its carbon emissions, with 77 % of the organizations reporting some form of decarbonization-related goals, and 90 % implementing at least one action to reduce embodied carbon on projects. The main drivers are concerns about global warming and the implementation of environmental programs within an organization, especially influenced by targets set by project owners. Limitations were also identified, for example, less than 50 % of the organizations developed carbon baselines for their projects and track their decarbonization progress. As indicated by the majority of respondents, relevant decarbonization barriers are the lack of knowledge and the potential cost impacts. A critical factor to overcome these challenges is the alignment between different stakeholders, as well as the support from governments and policies. The findings presented in this research map the current status of the industry, detect the gaps, and identify actions needed to transform current decarbonization objectives into tangible improvements.