ABSTRACT
The primary objective of retrofitting renewable technologies is to reduce the operational carbon emissions associated with providing energy to a building; the implication being that there should be no carbon emissions associated with doing so. However, unless the life cycle is genuinely carbon-neutral, all renewable technologies contain embodied carbon: in their materials, processing, assembly, transportation, maintenance and disposal. In the case of biomass boilers, the fuel itself embodies carbon from harvesting, processing and delivery, while heat pumps use mains electricity to drive the refrigeration process and ground coupling requires electric pumps to circulate water through underground pipework.
