Circular Economy Strategies for Decarbonization of the Built Environment Value Chain Scope 3 Emissions: A Network Analysis

With the anticipated growth in construction activities, minimizing value chain emissions, including those attributed to activities beyond an organization’s direct control—aka “Scope 3” emissions, and adopting circular economy (CE) practices have become critical to attaining the 2050 climate goals. Extant literature lacks a value-chain-comprehensive set of CE strategies on one hand, and an analysis of their actual project applications on the other. This research aims to build a holistic portfolio of CE actionable strategies that span across the entire built environment value chain, analyzing their extent of implementation and interlinkages within the literature versus actual projects. To this end, the authors conducted a systematic literature and practice review to extract and collate CE strategies and project case studies, and quantified the implementation frequency for each of the strategies and their interlinkages through a network analysis. Results revealed a broad yet fragmented implementation, with the most frequently implemented strategies including requiring sustainability ratings, passive design measures, and landfill diversion, whereas strategies targeting logistics and property market phases were rather scarce. Ultimately, the findings herein can serve as a foundation for a multifunctional database of value chain-specific strategies and case studies that can guide the industry on its track to decarbonization.