Convened by Climate KIC Australia, WWF Australia and Presync, The Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance (MECLA) brings together industry, government and research leaders to drive coordinated market transformation through trusted, pre-competitive collaboration.
Fostering partnerships across government, industry, research, and across the built environment value chain to accelerate systemic change.
Sending consistent demand signals to suppliers and manufacturers for low-carbon materials and supporting manufacturers on their decarbonisation journey to drive market transformation
Providing direct feedback on government and industry policies and advocating for procurement and embodied carbon standards at state and federal levels.
There is an urgent need to reduce embodied carbon in construction. As operational emissions from buildings decrease, embodied carbon is becoming an increasingly important contributor to the built environment’s overall emissions foodprint. Yet the construction sector is a complex ecosystem and no single organisation can drive the transition alone. Coordinated action across the entire value chain is needed to align demand, supply, policy and industry capability.
The Materials and Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance (MECLA) comprises 250+ participant organisations, 500+ active contributors and 150+ core contributors. MECLA participants collaborate across specialised working groups in response to both industry priorities and emerging opportunities across infrastructure, commercial buildings, residential construction and other areas of the built environment.
The alliance brings together stakeholders across the entire construction value chain to drive demand for low embodied carbon building materials, define a best practice embodied carbon evaluation framework, drive knowledge sharing and professional capability building, assist industry in driving innovation across material manufacturing and support industry through the transition.
Focusing on critical levers of change in markets, policy, regulation, skills, culture and collaboration, MECLA creates consistent demand signals for low-carbon materials, building capability through education and events, and aligning industry practices with government policy to ensure systemic impact. This systems innovation approach enables coordinated action across the built environment’s supply chain, positioning
Australia as a global leader in low and zero-carbon materials.
MECLA focuses on rapid research translation and practical implementation. The alliance takes a strategic approach to ensuring research activities are designed with a clear pathway to industry and policy impact. Research questions, methodologies and outputs are co‑produced with industry and government partners across the value chain, ensuring relevance, adoption and sector-wide alignment.
MECLA produces widely adopted, practical tools that support industry and government to specify, procure and deliver low‑carbon materials.
Example outputs include:
MECLA has delivered nationally significant outcomes that have reshaped how embodied carbon is understood, measured and implemented across Australia’s construction sector.
Through coordinated action across more than 250 organisations, the alliance has helped build market demand for carbon transparency and low embodied carbon materials. Between 2022 and 2026, more than 2000 Environmental Product Declarations entered the Australian market, while the use of other verified embodied carbon footprint assessment approaches has also become increasingly common, supporting more consistent, evidence-based material specifications.
Government stakeholders have indicated that MECLA’s collaborative processes and evidence-based guidance helped accelerate embodied carbon policy development by one to two years, with MECLA guidance now reflected in NSW infrastructure requirements, South Australian procurement frameworks and Transport for NSW tender documentation.
Overall, MECLA has helped shift the built environment sector from fragmented activity to coordinated market transformation, delivering environmental and economic benefits at a national scale. MECLA’s co‑produced tools and resources have supported industry and government efforts to better understand, measure, benchmark and reduce embodied carbon. The Low‑Carbon Concrete Specification Guide provides practical implementation guidance, while the Industry Readiness Index for Embodied Carbon Policy (developed with Infrastructure NSW) has informed discussions around the opportunities and challenges associated with introducing embodied carbon policy requirements. Field trials, including a low‑embodied‑carbon concrete pilot with a NSW local council, have demonstrated tangible reductions of 20–23% in built assets whilst providing practical guidance on how to replicate this success Australia-wide.
Climate KIC Australia plays a systems‑innovation and partnership facilitation role within MECLA, helping shape the alliance’s strategic direction.
As a founding partner, Climate KIC brings deep expertise in collaborative governance, market transformation and climate innovation, enabling MECLA to operate as a coordinated “do‑tank” rather than a traditional industry forum. This includes supporting the alliance to identify and respond to emerging challenges and opportunities across the built environment sector as they arise.
Climate KIC also supports the design and facilitation of MECLA’s working groups and works to strengthen cross‑sector engagement. By acting as a trusted, neutral broker, Climate KIC also ensures the partnership maintains the pre‑competitive trust required for manufacturers, developers, contractors and policymakers to collaborate.
As Principal – Strategic Initiatives at Climate KIC Australia, Kathy delivers large, multi-stakeholder projects. Her experience in this sector includes the built environment, embodied carbon, hard to abate industries, international climate policy and sustainable finance.
Kathy has over 12 years’ experience in setting up systems for the delivery of complex projects with large and diverse groups of stakeholders across industry, government and research organisations. Before moving to Australia, Kathy worked for a senior lawmaker in Germany’s parliament and international development agencies in Europe and Asia. She has a background in business administration, economics, literature and philosophy.
As Project Officer for Climate KIC Australia, Alexi is involved in communications and membership management for the Material and Embodied Carbon Leaders’ Alliance (MECLA). He has a background working in various environmental NGOs, a passion for tackling climate change, and a first class honours from the University of Sydney in philosophy.
Emily is a Project Officer at Climate KIC Australia, and has experience working across circular economy and embodied carbon initiatives. In her final year of Environmental Science at Macquarie University, she is supports coordination of collaborations through stakeholder engagement, systems design and communication.
MECLA pools knowledge and expertise from across the supply chain to provide accessible resources for anyone in the construction sector and related industries seeking to help reduce embodied carbon.
