LCBC: Low-Carbon Compliance for Every Kuala Lumpur Building
Cobler built DBKL's Low Carbon Building Checklist (LCBC) portal, with IEN and C40 Cities - making low-carbon design a mandatory, automated check for every building submission in Kuala Lumpur.
Low-carbon compliance for every Kuala Lumpur building
DBKL (Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur) has made low-carbon performance a mandatory requirement for building submissions in Kuala Lumpur, and the Low Carbon Building Checklist (LCBC) web portal is how that requirement is enforced. The low-carbon framework and assessment tool were developed by IEN Consultants, the project was funded by C40 Cities, and Cobler built the web portal and the engineering behind it.
The Cobler, IEN, and C40 Cities teams at DBKL.
The portal works at the three milestones every Kuala Lumpur building already passes through for approval — KM (planning permission), BP (building plan), and CCC (completion and compliance). At each stage, the project team enters the building's design data, and the portal runs an automated energy simulation to calculate the building's operational carbon, alongside its embodied carbon from materials and its transport-related emissions. Compliance is shown immediately. If a design exceeds the carbon threshold, the team adjusts it — better glazing, shading, a more efficient cooling system — and re-runs the assessment, repeating until the building meets the standard.
That single change in workflow is the point. Low-carbon performance is locked in from the earliest design stage, when it is cheapest to influence, rather than discovered too late. The initiative is part of Kuala Lumpur's Net Zero Carbon Emissions Buildings Roadmap, and is projected to avoid on the order of 250,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2030 — comparable to taking tens of thousands of cars off the road. More on the launch is shared here on LinkedIn.
With DBKL's Encik Nik, C40 Cities, and Neapoli.
For Cobler, the work is about turning an ambitious public policy into software that thousands of buildings can pass through — secure, reliable, and simple enough that an architect can use it without training. It is the same instinct behind our energy and operations platform and our building automation work: let the data and the workflow do the heavy lifting.
To talk about a platform for your own sustainability or compliance programme, get in touch, or see more of our work.
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