The construction industry wants to embrace low-carbon materials – but it’s still too risky

The construction industry is ready to go low carbon.

Companies want to use zero-cement concretes, electric arc furnace (EAF) steel, cork and hemp insulation, high-recycled-content brick slips, modular biobased panels, verified circular aggregates and other types of low-carbon materials.

But many of them aren’t because they lack a clear framework that tells them:

• what to use
• how to use it
• how to stay compliant

Without simple, authoritative guidelines, even willing companies face uncertainty around warranty, insurance, fire compliance, moisture management, and obtaining material information they can trust.

These aren’t ‘nice extras’ – they’re essential infrastructure governance tools, and the UK currently lacks them.

Enabling the material transition

As an ICE Policy Fellow working within the £3.5m Innovate UK-funded Realising Net Zero Liverpool (RNZL) initiative, I’ve seen this industry appetite first hand.

RNZL is a wide-ranging programme to address Liverpool’s acute challenges: fuel poverty, poor air quality, high embodied carbon in construction, and fragmented waste management.

Among its activities is a material transition strategy led by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and Liverpool City Council (LCC).

The strategy focuses on minimising construction emissions by swapping carbon-intensive materials with biobased, circular, and recycled alternatives.

To test industry interest, LJMU and LCC held a ‘triple helix’ workshop – one involving academia, industry, and government. It brought together 12 businesses across manufacturing, engineering, consultancy, and civic organisations.

This work has taught us valuable lessons about the UK policy gaps that are holding back the industry from embracing low-carbon materials.

3 changes we need to see

1. A clear national direction can prevent major financial risk

The UK faces a strategic materials challenge – and a financial one.

National infrastructure is built from high-carbon materials whose cost and availability are increasingly unstable. This means that financial risks are now embedded into public projects.

RNZL demonstrates that alternative materials can mitigate these risks, but only if the UK has a clear national direction.

Without intervention, public infrastructure built today will need costly retrofits to meet 2040–2050 regulations.

RNZL shows that design for disassembly (DfD) and bio-based materials cut whole-life financial liabilities, not just carbon.

2. National infrastructure policy must include material transition guidance

RNZL’s project shows that developers, contractors, and suppliers urgently need simple, practical guides on:

• what low-carbon, biobased, and circular materials to use;
• how to specify and install them safely;
• how to integrate them into design workflows; and
• what quality assurance (QA) and compliance evidence to record (environmental product declarations, batch tracking, digital material passports, and so on).

Currently, this guidance doesn’t exist at a national scale, exposing developers to procurement delays, warranty uncertainty, and insurance risk.

A national materials guidance suite (aligned to the Construction Playbook and the UK's next climate change risk assessment) would de-risk the use of low-carbon materials across infrastructure programmes.

3. The country needs mechanisms that reward waste-derived materials

Liverpool and Merseyside already possess abundant, underused waste streams with biobased potential:

• construction and demolition waste (currently incinerated)
• mixed municipal waste (incineration/landfill)
• street cleaning residues (incineration)
• wood wastes (incineration)
• excavated soil and stones (landfill)

These streams could supply biochar, recycled construction materials, insulation and engineered soils, cutting down emissions while reducing the need to import materials. 

But developers and processors will only use them if national policy establishes:

• verified waste stream certification to ensure organisations identify, classify and document the specific types of waste they use responsibly;
• procurement incentives for reclaimed materials;
• regional material hub infrastructure to collect, process, and reuse construction and demolition materials; and
• digital passporting that verifies the source of materials and guarantees compliance with standards.

Without these mechanisms, waste continues to be burned or buried, and infrastructure projects continue importing high carbon materials at growing cost risk.

A matter of policy, not technology

RNZL reveals a critical truth: the UK has a policy gap, not a technology gap.

Local industry is ready to transition to low-carbon materials.

National infrastructure policy must now provide the clarity, incentives, and compliance tools that allow it.

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