Architects Climate Action Network Calls for Regulation of Embodied Carbon
The majority of a building’s carbon emissions happen before it’s even opened.
By Lloyd AlterUpdated February 05, 2021Fact checked by Haley Mast
Source: Architects Climate Action Network Calls for Regulation of Embodied Carbon
Embodied carbon is controversial because some materials that are pretty standard in the construction industry have a lot of it, most notably steel and concrete, which together pump out about 12% of the world’s CO2 while being made. It was also not considered that important until recently; as John Ochsendorf’s famous graph shows, in a low-efficiency building like everyone used to build, operating energy and emissions dominate within a couple of years. In a more modern, normal efficiency building, operating energy still dominates over the life of a building. But if you take a high-efficiency modern building, it could take the entire lifetime of the building before operating emissions are greater than the embodied emissions. And we have been showing that graph for a decade.
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