Mott MacDonald launches Carbon Twin to minimise carbon impacts in infrastructure

Our Principal Sponsor, Mott MacDonald, has launched Carbon Twin, an interactive tool enabling better understanding of the hidden carbon or embodied emissions in a design project, and more informed decision-making towards a net-zero future.

Working with Genex Power Limited (Genex), Mott MacDonald successfully piloted the use of Carbon Twin on the Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro (KPSH) project in North Queensland, Australia. Using embodied carbon data, carbon pricing and building information modelling (BIM) designed assets1 from the project, the tool enabled visualisation of carbon intensity within a digital twin.

Key features of the Carbon Twin include:

• An easy-to-understand interactive 3D visualisation of carbon hotspots.
• An intuitive interface that includes tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and carbon cost data all in one place.
• Ability to rapidly assess financial impact of carbon now and for future carbon pricing.
• A view across all facilities in your portfolio, and ability to drill down into individual elements.
• Track embodied carbon throughout the design lifecycle and feed this back to design teams to drive down carbon.
• Fully customisable and applicable to all asset types.

David Johnson, managing director of Mott MacDonald’s Asia Pacific, New Zealand and Australia business said: “The importance of carbon management has increased drastically over the last few years, with carbon now being embedded into all infrastructure decision making. This tool allows carbon understanding to go beyond the design team and carbon specialists, empowering stakeholders at all levels of the business to recognise hotspots and take action to reduce carbon.”

Figure 1: Ability to isolate individual works packages for closer inspection of carbon

Commenting on Genex’s use of Carbon Twin, CEO James Harding said: “Carbon Twin is a powerful visualisation tool that has proved most helpful in identifying and understanding carbon hotspots within the KPSH project. Genex is a leader in the development and operation of renewable energy and storage projects, providing renewable energy on tap, and this means that all our projects directly generate or facilitate the generation of renewable energy. Sustainable project design is therefore an important consideration, and I believe that the Carbon Twin tool will allow for better ESG decision-making in the early phases of renewable projects, given its ability to provide an in-depth understanding of carbon emissions within a project.”

Mott MacDonald is at the forefront of efforts to decarbonise infrastructure combining its domain expertise, carbon advisory and digital innovation to help clients work towards net-zero. The Carbon Twin complements Mott MacDonald’s Moata Carbon Portal, which measures embodied and operational carbon footprints of BIM designed assets. Carbon Twin enables visualisation of those calculations in a 3D model.

Learn more about Mott MacDonald's Carbon Twin here.

About Mott MacDonald

Opening opportunities with connected thinking. Mott MacDonald is a US$2bn engineering, management and development consultancy.

Our purpose is to improve society by considering social outcomes in everything we do; relentlessly focusing on excellence and digital innovation, transforming our clients' businesses, our communities and employee opportunities.

To this end we’re involved in:

• solving some of the world’s most urgent social, environmental and economic challenges
• helping governments and businesses plan, deliver and sustain their strategic goals
• responding to humanitarian and natural emergencies
• improving people’s lives

Our expertise by sector includes buildings, communications, defence, education, environment, health, industry, energy, transport, urban development, water, wastewater and more. Our skills encompass planning, studies and design, project finance, technical advisory services, project and programme management, management consultancy and beyond.

For every project, we create the blend of talent needed to create the right result – appropriate; cost, carbon and resource-efficient; safe, easy and swift to deliver and operate; reliable and resilient; delivering great outcomes.

Engineering. Management. Consultancy.

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