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LCA of a WeWork TI Project

Research Questions:  

What are the environmental impacts of a typical WeWork office? How can WeWork reduce embodied carbon across its construction supply chain?

About

WeWork (a company no longer in business) provided office spaces around the world and wanted to understand the environmental impacts of a typical WeWork office. The Carbon Leadership Forum was asked to estimate these impacts by performing a life cycle assessment of a sample WeWork commercial office tenant improvement project. The Carbon Leadership Forum identified critical items in the project to help WeWork understand the environmental impacts of its supply chain.

Summary Document

This summary document is an abridged version of the full internal report presented to WeWork. It summarizes the goal and scope, methodology, results, and discussion of this study.

Research Team

  • K. Simonen (PI)
  • M. Huang
  • B.X. Rodriguez

Acknowledgments

The research team would like to thank Meghan Lewis of WeWork for her role in initiating this study and providing the needed material data for this work.

The research team would also like to recognize the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, who sponsored an earlier preliminary study exploring the LCA impacts of MEP and TI. This earlier study provided the foundational work for this WeWork study.

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Reclaimed and Reused: Recommended LCA Modeling Guidance to Support EPDs for Reused Construction Materials

Material reuse is one strategy for reducing the embodied carbon of construction. While the preparation of previously used materials for reuse has an environmental impact, it avoids many of the resource extraction and manufacturing impacts of building with newly manufactured products. Given the amount of demolition and deconstruction across North America (and beyond), there is a vast potential for material reuse to expand in scale. However, barriers to material reuse scaling exist.

DEQ Low Embodied Carbon Housing Program: Roadmap to Success

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International Embodied Carbon Data Availability: A Review of Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Availability in Europe, China, and Australia

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Embodied Carbon Pathways to 2050 for the United States

Embodied Carbon Pathways to 2050 for the United States, a collaboration between the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), RMI, and the University of Washington (UW) Life Cycle Lab, provides an assessment of embodied carbon from US construction materials and explores pathways to align with a 1.5°C global warming limit.

Washington State Carbon Emissions Estimation: 2025 – 2050

Emissions from the operations of buildings and infrastructure are significant, well-understood contributors to national and global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the contribution of embodied carbon—emissions associated with the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal of construction materials across the life cycle of a building or asset—is neglected by comparison. Even at the global level, embodied carbon estimates are typically based on manufacturing emissions from the production of a handful of the highest-impact materials (e.g. concrete, steel, aluminum, and wood).

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