Abstract The design and assessment of net-zero buildings commonly focus exclusively on the operational phase, ignoring the embodied environmental impacts over the building life cycle. An analysis is presented on the consequences of integrating embodied impacts into the assessment of the environmental advantageousness of net-zero concepts. Fundamental issues needing consideration in the design process – based on the evaluation of primary energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions – are examined by comparing three net-zero building design and assessment cases: (1) no embodied impacts included, net balance limited to the operation stage only; (2) embodied impacts included but evaluated separately…