Primer Debuts on Life-Cycle Assessments of Embodied Carbon in Buildings
A recently released primer for the use of a life-cycle assessment approach to analyze the environmental impacts of buildings is considered a small but necessary step toward the ambitious goal of getting to net-zero embodied carbon and operational greenhouse gas emissions in the construction, operation and decommissioning of buildings. The LCA guide comes after the release of the first-of-its-kind benchmarking database of embodied carbon in existing buildings. And another first—a tool to calculate embodied carbon in construction—is on the horizon.
"Architects and engineers are starting to use LCAs in practice because of growing awareness of sustainability and because they can get LEED points," says Kate Simonen, director of the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington, which published the 33-page primer, called Life-Cycle Assessment of Buildings: A Practice Guide, late last month.