The Buildings Category includes topics that can help advance our understanding of how to best quantify and reduce total life cycle carbon emissions at the building scale with an emphasis on understanding and reducing embodied carbon.

This category includes topics about reducing the environmental impacts of construction operations by focusing on actions that contractors can take to reduce embodied carbon that results from the construction process, primarily “inside the gate,” but also as a result of the specification and procurement of construction materials and services.

This category is applied to topics that help our embodied carbon academic community to collectively share and catalyze our research, teaching tools, findings, and expertise.

This category covers the development of methodologies, benchmarks, standards, and tools to advance life cycle assessment use and practice.

This category applies to topics that relate to reducing the carbon intensity of materials, which are at the heart of embodied carbon in buildings. Although some traditional and emerging materials can offer significant embodied carbon reductions compared to business-as-usual and conventional solutions, intentionally selecting and optimizing materials for the express purpose of reducing embodied carbon is rarely a project driver.

This category is appropriate for topics that address sharing and advancing successful policies to reduce the embodied carbon footprint of building materials, particularly during manufacturing and construction phases.

This category is applied to topics that explore the variety of ways to Build With Carbon—rapidly renewable, plant-based materials as well as minimally-processed, ultra-low-CO2 alternatives. Our network is interested in generating tools for communicating these and to promote an understanding that our built environment must become a major carbon sink on Earth, to ensure a sustainable future.

This category is for topics that explore and support building reuse. Even with renovations and costs for upgrading, building reuse results in significantly lower embodied emissions than new construction, and upgrading existing buildings is the only way we are going to reduce emissions from existing buildings.

This category is intended for in-depth discussions and community-based support for users of the EC3 tool (Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator).

This category is applied to topics that discuss how to promote and educate the building industry and a wider public about embodied carbon, and communicates the Network’s research, projects and initiatives to broad audiences in order to drive widespread understanding and support for carbon reduction activities.

Structural engineers have the opportunity to be leaders in the growing market of climate-smart building design and construction. Structural materials account for at least 50% of the carbon emitted in production, delivery, and installation of materials for new construction; these ‘embodied carbon’ impacts of structures are significant and must be addressed.

The major areas of energy consumption in buildings are heating, ventilation, and air conditioning—35% of total building energy; lighting—11%; major appliances (water heating, refrigerators and freezers, dryers)—18% with the remaining 36% in miscellaneous areas including electronics. In each case there are opportunities both for improving the performance of system components (e.g., improving the efficiency of lighting devices) and improving the way they are controlled as a part of integrated building systems (e.g., sensors that adjust light levels to occupancy and daylight).

Suggestion Box. How can we improve the way our Community works? New features? New categories? New ways to contribute? Better navigation?

This category is designed for topics created by people who are looking for jobs where their understanding, expertise, and passion for embodied carbon reduction will be valuable, and people who work for companies with open positions for such people.

We post links to breaking news about the global movement to decarbonize built environments.

This category is for posting thoughts, ideas, reflections, and general comments. Share your experience using this community platform and what you hope we may accomplish, or your reaction to the state of the world this morning, or a new insight into decarbonizing built environments, or how we can use this platform to build relationships and identify opportunities for collaboration.

The Roundtable develops alignment and promotes collaboration among key organizations playing a leading role in the global decarbonization movement.

This category is intended for in-depth discussions and community-based support for users of the Tally tool…

Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP)

CLF newsletters are published on the second Tuesday of each month.

For discussion topics related to developing and extending the CLF network. This category is used by the CLF Network Development group.

Topics in this category are related to operational carbon (energy supplied to buildings to support their operations) as well as the relationship of and balance between operational and embodied carbon.