Can Embodied Carbon be monetized?

Good evening,
I am currently dealing with the question whether one can also assign a value concept to embodied carbon or whether there are studies on this. The amount of embodied carbon can be determined relatively well over the life cycle, but what about a possible monetization? Operational carbon can be monetized very well, but what about embodied carbon? The German real estate valuation procedures hardly give any possibility to include possible sustainability aspects in the valuation.
I am of the opinion that a monetary understanding of the emissions could certainly contribute to giving an incentive for ecologically sustainable building.

I would be very interested in your thoughts on this topic.

Some entities include an internal cost of carbon, from private companies to states and cities.

Aureus Earth is also in this space and recently completed a transaction. https://www.prweb.com/releases/2022/9/prweb18906508.htm

It’s really complicated to create a baseline and proposed case to determine what carbon reduction or sequestration is being sold, but with due diligence it’s possible.

-Kjell

1 Like

Embodied carbon could also be monetized as part of a larger carbon finance structure. One prevalent idea is a carbon tax or carbon fee/dividend system such as that proposed by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
Embodied carbon would incur a fee per unit either at source or at border. That fee is redistrubited as research grants for alternative production methods, a sum returned to the consumer and a few other things I can’t remember. Worth reading up on!

There is a study from America linking Carbon to Capex which might be of interest Using construction data and whole life cycle assessment to establish sustainable roadway performance benchmarks - ScienceDirect