Guidance

Whole Life Carbon Management

Best practice guidance to assess and drive holistic emission reductions in programmes in infrastructure and the built environment.

Documents

NISTA WLC Management Handbook

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Details

The UK Government already has a legally binding commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and the intermediary reduction targets legislated for in Carbon Budgets. Decarbonising infrastructure is as essential element in achieving those goals.

It means recognising carbon’s role in every stage of infrastructure development, from initial concept through to construction and operation, and thinking creatively about how we mitigate and minimise its impacts.

This handbook provides technical teams and decision makers with guidance on how to approach Whole Life Carbon (WLC) management, and embed good practices through overarching principles, key guidelines and application of existing industry standards and other guidance.

The principles and guidelines in this document are set out to support a project outcome in line with PAS2080:2023. This handbook also identifies the key outputs of the process and how these integrate with the HM Treasury Project Business Case decision making process.

Updates to this page

Published 5 March 2026

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