Climate, Carbon, and Human Health

Buildings can shift from being part of the problem to part of the solution

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Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3)

As a first universal step to enable anyone to measure the amount of carbon dioxide embodied in buildings, a new tool is becoming available known as the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3). The companies, Skanska and Microsoft, were the original seed funders for EC3, but it has now moved to the University of Washington’s Carbon Leadership Forum, where it is managed and maintained. As a universal tool, EC3 will be open source, free to use, and accessible to all. It is expected to formally launch in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Stacy Smedley, a director of sustainability at Skanska USA, provides some insight into the background of this effort. “We pioneered the EC3 tool with Microsoft because of the lack of tools and product labels that reveal this information in a completely transparent and easy-to-compare way. materialsCAN, with the help of EC3, is the perfect platform for building awareness and education around an often missing but wildly impactful metric,” she says.

According to the website where EC3 is in beta testing, the online EC3 tool will provide a simple, fairly straightforward way for anyone to estimate the carbon footprint of any building or space (www.buildingtransparency.org). This emerging tool will allow users to search construction materials by global warming potential (GWP) in a public, searchable database based on EPD data. Currently, there are close to 10,000 materials in the database, including concrete, steel, and gypsum. By public release, EC3 will include EPDs for products related to building enclosure and interiors. It is also expected to be able to show the variances among EPDs for products that use differing PCRs due to different iterations of PCR updates.

Reflecting on the ways this tool will empower the design and construction community, Conway says, “Carbon footprint information within our product category has been available for a long time, but it hasn’t been easy for specifiers to understand how to compare it. With so many organizations having climate goals now, we need to prioritize embodied carbon in projects as part of overall carbon-reduction strategies to make a significant and measurable impact on the supply-chain emissions of buildings.”

Source: www.buildingtransparency.org

The embodied carbon construction calculator (EC3) is a new tool coming available to allow anyone involved in building design and construction to estimate the carbon footprint of any project—large, small, renovation, or new construction.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF IMPACT REDUCTION

The people at BuildCarbonNeutral.org identify seven fundamental principles (shown below) that are the basis of reducing the impact of building design and construction on the environment, and hence on people.

Site and location matter. The location of a project will have a direct impact on the overall carbon footprint. Where you choose to build will impact the potential carbon release and the potential for carbon sequestration in the landscape. Is it a brownfield site? Is it a degraded or a pristine ecosystem? Can you restore an ecosystem in the process of developing your project?
Disturbance is impact. Protect existing soil and vegetation, and move things only when needed. Do you really need to move a pile of soil multiple times? Do you need to build a temporary structure? Can you reuse equipment and materials?
Natural ecosystems sequester carbon. Natural ecosystems sequester a lot of carbon. Most of this is stored below ground and easily released by soil disturbance. Appropriate landscaping sequesters carbon, and it can be designed and maintained to accumulate additional carbon over time. Have you minimized soil disturbance? What landscapes are best suited to your site and ecoregion? Can you use natural ecosystems to help lower your carbon footprint?
Smaller is better. Less building results in less embodied carbon. What is your building program? How do you use space? Can you take advantage of outdoor space? How much building do you really need?
Buildings can sequester carbon. This is part of a “love carbon” strategy intended to go beyond low embodied carbon to help reverse global warming. It is based on building that uses products and materials with carbon-storing (sequestering) capability and therefore reduces your carbon footprint. Wood from certified renewable sources, or wood salvaged from demolition and saved from the landfill, can often be considered net-carbon sinks. Planting new trees can compensate for the carbon released during material transport.
Material choice matters. Material choice can reduce your building’s embodied carbon footprint. Where did the material come from? Is it local? Did it require a lot of energy to extract it or get it to your building? Can it be replaced at the source? Was it recycled? Can it be recycled or reused easily? Is the material durable, or will it need to be replaced?
Reuse to reduce impact. It is possible to avoid new embodied carbon by reusing a site or structure. Make the changes necessary to improve the operational carbon footprint of an old building before building new. Is there an existing building or site that suits your needs? Can you adapt a building with minimal change?

Find out more at www.buildcarbonneutral.org/about.php.

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Originally published in June 2019

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