What is Embodied Carbon? And why we should be paying close attention to it

Let’s dive into embodied carbon, the building industries best opportunity to make change and reach climate reduction targets. We hope you enjoy.

Up to 11% of all human caused emissions on the planet are produced from the carbon footprint of building materials. Every stage of getting a building material to a construction site produces GHG emissions. 'Embodied Carbon' is the total emissions associated with harvesting, transporting and manufacturing of these building materials.

We are all familiar with energy efficiency or more formally, operational emissions. The building industry has been forcing it down our throats for nearly as long as we’ve been swinging the hammer. The more efficient we make our homes the less energy it takes to heat and cool them and therefore the more we’re helping the environment. Right? It does make sense, well, until we’ve gone too far and all of a sudden it doesn't anymore.
Wrapping houses in 2” of XPS foam or building homes entirely out of concrete just to achieve a slightly better r-values or air tightness? There are so many ways we can achieve higher performing homes that don't have a huge climate knock on effect.

It’s safe to say that building with high embodied carbon materials to just reach certain levels of energy efficiency can far outweigh the gains of building energy efficient in the first place.

Let's quickly look at this simple example…

The average Nelson / Castlegar new home has an average of 1.25 tonnes of operational emissions per year. The average embodied carbon associated with building these homes is around 29 tonnes of emissions. Now if we compare the upfront embodied carbon emissions vs the average yearly operation emissions it would take 23 years for this equation to balance out.

In other words it would take 23 years of operating the building to generate the same emissions as those associated with the building materials used to build in the first place. And these are just averages. In our time as an embodied carbon analyst, we have seen much much worse.
 

One of the most important things about embodied carbon is that by reducing it we are taking GHGs out of the atmosphere today, therefore helping align immediately with our strict climate reduction targets.
 

Here at Build Environmental we are working towards a new standard for energy efficient, high performance houses—built with materials that are low in Embodied Carbon. It’s our passion to guide environmentally conscious homes for our future. Using Embodied Carbon accounting software, we break the building down into sections and generate reports on the precise amount of GHG Emissions associated with a building project.

With a deep understanding of the building process, and the Embodied Carbon associated with building materials—we make informed design and material substitution suggestions so that you can reduce the overall impact of your building project.


Why should we be paying closer attention to embodied carbon?
So apart from the obvious climate reasons, why should we be paying close attention to embodied carbon? It's our understanding that it's only a matter of time before you see embodied carbon regulation coming into your municipality. The City of Vancouver has already introduced embodied carbon regulation in part 3 buildings and are currently offering incentives of up to $40,000 for reducing embodied carbon in part 9 residential builds.
The City of Vancouver does write and operate under its own building code however, what becomes regulation in Vancouver normally becomes part of the BC building code not long after.

As the global climate crisis continues and governments are pressured into reducing GHG emissions, the 11% of all global emissions associated with building materials is just too big a piece of the climate pie to sweep under the carpet. Embodied carbon is here to stay, so why not put our best foot forward and the environment first.

As always, hit me back with your thoughts and comments, would love to hear from you.