Jamestown – Rethinking carbon impact: Adaptive reuse outperforms new construction

Jamestown conducted Life Cycle Assessments for two office adaptive reuse projects in Amsterdam and Cologne, comparing their whole life-cycle carbon impact against hypothetical new-build scenarios. The analysis covered both upfront embodied carbon and use-stage emissions over a 50-year building lifespan. The study highlights that focusing only on operational carbon understates the true environmental benefits of reuse and reinforces the need for a whole life-cycle perspective in development decisions.