What is embodied carbon in buildings?

[@Dumpercoin]

Reading for my dissertation on off-site manufacturing and coming across this is gold

[@BuildersforClimateAction]

Happy to hear your like it!

[@FlaviodeStefano27]

This is amazing. Great way to explain what embodied carbon is!!

[@BuildersforClimateAction]

Thanks!

[@mahshidmoghaddam7444]

Thanks for this clear and coherent intresting explanation of embodied carbon and its drawdown through this amazing video! I enjoyed a lot!

[@michaelbrogden1926]

This is a great video. Thanks for making it. Really informative. I will definitely share this

[@LauraFellerOfficial]

Great video and very worth watching. Perfectly explained for everyone!

[@BhanuPChauhan]

Great insight into embodied carbon! But I am not sure how the energy consumption (especially fossil fuel based) by construction machinery/on site process during the construction phase is factored into this? There are a lot of other sources of emissions produced during months and years of construction. It only appears to be considering material lifecycle based carbon.

[@chrismagwood971]

You are right, we are calculating emissions on the "material phase" of the life cycle... all the emissions associated with harvesting raw materials, getting them to a factory and manufacturing a product (phases A1-A3). We focus here because this is the majority of emissions for building materials (65-85% of the full life cycle emissions), and because these emissions arise from the best data. We are not taking into account transportation emissions to the building site (A4), or emissions from construction (A5), partly because these are smaller (usually just 5-10% of life cycle emissions) and because they are site-specific and cannot be captured accurately in a generalized way. I tend to use a car analogy, where A1-A3 emissions are the "fuel mileage" and the thing that gets advertised because it's the most impactful, while A4 and A5 emissions are like the frequency of oil and brake changes... good to know, but not the basis of most decisions.

[@BhanuPChauhan]

​@@chrismagwood971 Thanks for the explanation. Although, I find it hard to believe that a building is truly carbon drawdown --- capturing more carbon than it has and will produce since it did not capture any carbon in the first place. It was merely transferred/transformed by harvesting plants into building material and in the process, devoiding the plants of future capability of carbon capturing. Unless there's some magical carbon-capture device installed which in turn captures more carbon than what is emitted during its own lifecycle plus building's lifecycle; or the building produces more clean energy for itself and society than it needs in its entire lifecycle offsetting the embodied carbon completely. I might sound a bit amateur but just trying to see the bigger picture. :D

[@chrismagwood971]

@@BhanuPChauhan The carbon capture happens before the building is made, when the plant-based materials used in the building draw CO2 out of the atmosphere and incorporate the carbon into their structures. For non-timber plant materials, this carbon came out of the atmosphere recently and would have returned if not stored in a building. When the amount of carbon stored in the material exceeds the emissions generated to harvest and produce the material, the effect is net carbon storage. This kind of carbon capture and storage is among the strategies included in all IPCC reports and is considered necessary to meet climate targets.

[@BhanuPChauhan]

@@chrismagwood971 Broaching the same subject again, I think the carbon sequestration potential of plant-based materials can be overstated. While wood products and biobased materials may sequester some amount of carbon during their production and use, this carbon sequestration is generally considered to be part of the natural biogenic carbon cycle and should not typically be included in embodied carbon calculations unless there is some carbon offset by more plantation which should be transparently disclosed to avoid double-counting. When the building materials are disposed of or naturally biodegrade, the carbon that was sequestered during their production/use is eventually released back into the atmosphere in well under a century. In a research led by the University of Arizona, it was suggested that dead forests release less carbon into atmosphere than expected. "Trees killed in the wake of widespread mountain pine beetle infestations have not resulted in a large spike in carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, contrary to predictions, a UA-led study has found." While it is possible for a building to reduce its carbon footprint or strive for a net zero status through the use of cleaner materials and carbon offsets, it is still unclear to me how a building can truly be net negative solely through the use of plant-based materials and without the use of any advanced carbon capture or storage system or next-gen technology.

[@chrismagwood971]

@@BhanuPChauhan You are correct that the storage potential can be overstated. In our work (and in the BEAM tool we developed), we do not count any carbon storage value for virgin timber products, for many of the reasons you state here. However, for agricultural residues, short-cycle crops and waste stream fibers, there is strong justification that the carbon stored in this biomass were destined to become emissions in the short term, and that long-term (50+ years) storage in buildings has a demonstrably positive impact on total atmospheric CO2 levels (especially at scale). The fate of this carbon at the end of the material's life in a building may result in a new emission (and part of our climate response needs to be tracking those emissions and preventing them by re-use, re-cycling, conversion to biochar or other means). But durable carbon removals in buildings can play an important role in meeting our climate targets over the next century. I'm currently working on a paper with several climate scientists to make this case.

[@bamirunz7434]

Awesome video!! Thanks for the great insight.

[@LAC-qs9pf]

Thank you for this informative video 👏🏾

[@mcmd0k]

Great video 👍🏻 does anyone know how is GWP calculated per year? I have seen total GWP results which i know are for a 50 year period i believe, per m2 ( this is standard for LCAs for buildings) but sometimes as architects we are being asked to describe our design as kgCO2e per m2 per year. How would that be calculated?

[@ursulawalter]

Absolutely great and necessary content. Thank you very much. Now, I’m having a terrible time looking for the information of the materials I’m considering for the house in the Amazon… I’m looking for being self sufficient and low impact; for instance I don’t know how to calculate the materials carbon fp and what would be the best solution for generate electricity: solar panels (could make the mirror effect and affect birds?), CH4 generators so we don’t contaminate the soil and rivers with our waste, wind mills??

[@ChristinaEbisch]

Thanks, that was a real good summery. 🙏

[@joem7819]

great video.

[@miko17ish]

Thanks its very helpful

[@tomasderville6863]

Great video, please keep it up!!!!

[@iknowyouwanttofly]

If the best building was heated with biochar production it would be even better i think ?

[@hinata5963]

For example I don't know how many kg of materials I have in my building but I have them in m2.

[@hinata5963]

Thank you so much for this video, I have a question though. I want to calculate the embodied carbon footprint of a building but I don't know how to calculate it. Is there any video explaining the method we calculate it?

[@BuildersforClimateAction]

Currently, we do not have a video about that. Check out our Builders For Climate Action Initiative. We will be launching a carbon calculator soon! www.buildersforclimateaction.org/. You can also check out our carbon accounting webinar Here: endeavourcentre.eventsmart.com/events/basic-carbon-accounting-for-buildings-1-5hrs-2/

[@hinata5963]

@@BuildersforClimateAction OMG, thank you so much! I wasn't expecting an immediate response, I sincerely appreciate it. I'm currently writing a paper about a life cycle assessment (cradle to grave) hempcrete building, however, when I used a tool (mesh stage embodied carbon calculator) I don't understand why they gave a positive value of KgCO2eq. From my understanding, hempcrete should've a negative global warming potential. However in their calculator hempcrete have a global warming potential value of (40 KgCO2e) per m3. Is this value correct?

[@BuildersforClimateAction]

@@hinata5963 Most programs are not accounting for biogenic carbon or the recarbonization of lime. Our calculator will be taking this in account and thats what makes ours different from the rest! sign up for the Builders for Climate action newsletter to get notified when the calculator goes live!

[@hinata5963]

@@BuildersforClimateAction thank you so much! Otherwise, for the embodied carbon of the wall and flours Compositions, do we take the material potential KgCO2e and multiply it with the thinkness and surface? Is that the correct way to calculate the embodied carbon of the building layers? So it will be on KgCO2e per m3?

[@daviesjh100]

Hi, Love this video and would like to use it as part of an e-learning module here in the UK. Can I get permission to share this content.

[@BuildersforClimateAction]

Please email us through our website and we can chat further, thanks!

[@daviesjh100]

@@BuildersforClimateAction thank you for your reply. I have tried to contact you via your website but the messaging system is not working. Please provide me with a direct email address.

[@BuildersforClimateAction]

@@daviesjh100 Sorry about that, we have put in a request to repair the contact form. In the mean time you can contact us here: www.buildersforclimateaction.org/contact.html

[@user-vd2cf5yr1z]

thank u

[@danielkrajnik3817]

4:41 his name is maximus decimus meridius

[@soumario]

Climate Change [not scientifically proven] & Environment Deterioration [evident but not proven] are completely different. Climate Change [not scientifically proven] & Global warming [debunked] are completely different. Greenhouse Gases & Carbon Emissions/Footprint are not the same.

[@gaiadevelopment]

Environmental Deterioration - do you really need it to be proven by some outside authority to be "proven"? Walk through an old growth forest, dive in an ocean reef, measure pollutants in groundwater, count wildlife population, and see for yourself how much it is degrading.

[@262shiv]

4 floors , 10000sqft, only 209 tons of emissions...thats is around 24 people staying in the building...its just 8ton of carbon emission per capita for a home to stay for a long term....average hypocrite westerner and the maker of this video releases 15t co2/year, 1ton by flying from new york to London... So instead of concentrating on the massive emission from other sources..the world is concentrating on the release of minimal emissions from the buildings which are essential😅 Due to such propoganda, world will never be a better place to live😅