Climate Confident LEED v5, Embodied Carbon, and Real Emissions Cuts
What if the biggest barrier to decarbonising buildings isn’t technology, cost, or ambition - but sheer complexity?
The built environment produces nearly 40% of global emissions, yet we still make low-carbon construction harder than it needs to be.
In this episode, I’m joined by Tommy Linstroth, founder of Green Badger, to unpack why construction remains one of the most overlooked climate battlegrounds, and why that’s a mistake. We dig into LEED v5, embodied carbon, and the growing gap between climate ambition and what actually happens on building sites. The stakes are huge: buildings lock in emissions for decades, sometimes centuries.
You’ll hear why builders aren’t resisting sustainability, they’re drowning in shifting standards, paperwork, and fragmented data. We explore how LEED has evolved, why carbon now sits at the centre of green building standards, and how decisions made at the design stage quietly determine emissions for the next 100 years. Tommy also explains why third-party verification matters, how “build to code” often means “barely legal”, and why retrofitting existing buildings may be the hardest climate challenge nobody likes talking about.
We also dig into where genuine momentum is emerging - from falling renewable costs to better data and smarter software, and how climate tech, including AI, could finally make the low-carbon choice the easy choice. If net zero, emissions reduction, and the energy transition are serious goals, then construction can’t stay a side quest.
🎙️ Listen now to hear how Tommy Linstroth and Green Badger are helping turn sustainable building from a compliance headache into real-world climate action.
Kismet: Golf tournaments can book venues out to 2049, yet many organisations still can’t map a credible path to 2040 climate targets. The problem isn’t foresight, it’s priorities.
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