What’s “Embodied Carbon”?
According to RMI: “Embodied carbon is calculated as global warming potential (GWP) and expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent units (CO2e). To quantify a product's embodied carbon, an analysis called life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to assess the environmental impacts associated with each stage of the product lifecycle.”
Simply put, embodied carbon measures how much a given thing contributes to the climate emergency. Many materials—foams, plastics, ceramics—are made with noxious chemicals and high heat, accelerating climate volatility. Other materials—straw, wood, algae—grow naturally and (when used properly) reduce climate change’s effects.
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So, why is this urgent? For that, we turn to Bruce King & Chris Magwood’s excellent book “Build Beyond Zero” (excerpted from pages 19 to 22):
“By the late 1970s, the first green building pioneers had worked out that the amount of energy needed to operate most buildings was huge, and unnecessarily so...Very early analyses showed that the operating energy for just about any building, over the course of a few decades of expected service, would dwarf the embodied energy needed to make the building. Thus our marching orders were clear: The green building movement of the subsequent few decades focused almost exclusively on reducing operating energy.
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Under imminent threat, you prioritize actions to save life. In the case of buildings, this means that we need to eliminate all the emissions associated with the next two decades of construction and building operation. We in the green building movement assumed for a long time that we were already doing the right thing because reducing energy demand in new buildings meant less global warming. Only recently have we started looking more closely and noticing that over the next few decades the emissions arising from manufacturing materials and making buildings dominates the emissions profile of virtually all buildings.
...
We then realized that the climate effect was much more than the amount of the emissions; when they went into the air mattered too...Considering this time value of emissions...three quarters of the climate impact from a project built today, over the next two decades, will be from the materials chosen for its construction.”
Simply put, embodied carbon measures how much a given thing contributes to the climate emergency. Many materials—foams, plastics, ceramics—are made with noxious chemicals and high heat, accelerating climate volatility. Other materials—straw, wood, algae—grow naturally and (when used properly) reduce climate change’s effects.
_
So, why is this urgent? For that, we turn to Bruce King & Chris Magwood’s excellent book “Build Beyond Zero” (excerpted from pages 19 to 22):
“By the late 1970s, the first green building pioneers had worked out that the amount of energy needed to operate most buildings was huge, and unnecessarily so...Very early analyses showed that the operating energy for just about any building, over the course of a few decades of expected service, would dwarf the embodied energy needed to make the building. Thus our marching orders were clear: The green building movement of the subsequent few decades focused almost exclusively on reducing operating energy.
...
Under imminent threat, you prioritize actions to save life. In the case of buildings, this means that we need to eliminate all the emissions associated with the next two decades of construction and building operation. We in the green building movement assumed for a long time that we were already doing the right thing because reducing energy demand in new buildings meant less global warming. Only recently have we started looking more closely and noticing that over the next few decades the emissions arising from manufacturing materials and making buildings dominates the emissions profile of virtually all buildings.
...
We then realized that the climate effect was much more than the amount of the emissions; when they went into the air mattered too...Considering this time value of emissions...three quarters of the climate impact from a project built today, over the next two decades, will be from the materials chosen for its construction.”