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Analysis of Embodied and Operational Carbon Impacts of 30 Buildings
The California Carbon Report is the first in a series of reports to be released as part of the multi-year CLF WBLCA Benchmarking Study (v2).
About
Actors in the built environment are promoting strategies targeted at reducing the environmental impacts of buildings. Many government agencies, design companies, builders, and developers have proposed voluntary net-zero commitments to drive change across the sector. Similarly, policymakers at both the state and national levels have been passing successful legislation to achieve mandatory emissions reductions, and many of these policies rely heavily on building-related decarbonization. Though all of these commitments and policies vary in their scopes and ambition levels, they all ultimately seek to reduce GHG emissions in alignment with Paris Agreement targets. Still, building decarbonization at scale has continued to prove challenging.
In this study, we investigated the use of whole life carbon assessment (WLCA) through a sample of 30 new construction building projects located in the State of California that were sourced from design practitioners as part of the CLF WBLCA Benchmark Study (v2). California was chosen for this preliminary study owing to its unique climate, large population, geographic size, rapidly decarbonizing electrical grid, ambitious climate targets, and quickly evolving policy landscape. By conducting this analysis, we sought to answer the following questions:
- What is the projected balance of emissions between embodied and operational carbon over time for a sample of new buildings in California?
- What are reasonable estimates of embodied and operational carbon intensities for the buildings analyzed?
- What are the most significant contributors to embodied carbon impacts from different buildings’ scopes, elements, or materials?
- What are the current gaps and challenges within industry practices toward developing comprehensive whole life carbon assessments?
- How do the results vary based on changes to LCA methods and assumptions?
Authors
The research team from the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington College of Built Environments and the University of California Berkeley Center for the Built Environment:
- Brad Benke, Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
- Matt Roberts, Postdoctoral Researcher, Center for the Built Environment, University of California Berkeley
- Yang Shen, Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
- Steph Carlisle, Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
- Mel Chafart, Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
- Kate Simonen, Executive Director, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
Author contributions: Writing – original draft: B.B., M.R., and Y.S.; Writing – review and editing: B.B., M.R., Y.S., S.C., K.S., and M.C.; Conceptualization: K.S.; Methodology: B.B., M.R., Y.S., S.C., and K.S.; Data curation: M.C., B.B., Y.S., and M.R.; Formal analysis: Y.S. and B.B.; Visualization and Graphics: Y.S., B.B., and M.R.
Published
May 2024
Acknowledgments
The research team would like to thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the ClimateWorks Foundation, and the Breakthrough Energy Foundation for supporting this research project.
Thank you to the data contributors of this study who provided substantial time and effort in submitting building project data for this report and sharing feedback with the research team:
Thank you to the CLF WBLCA Benchmark Study (v2) pilot phase participants who helped test and inform the data collection methods used for this study:
Additionally, thank you to the research staff that engaged with this project during its initiation, helped develop background research for its execution, and/or provided technical review:
- Milad Ashtiani, Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
- Allison Hyatt, (former) Researcher, Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington
- Fiona Greer, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley
Copyright
The California Carbon Report: An Analysis of the Embodied and Operational Carbon Impacts of 30 Buildings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
Citation
Benke, B., Roberts, M., Shen, Y., Carlisle, S., Chafart, M., and Simonen, K. (2024). The California Carbon Report: An Analysis of the Embodied and Operational Carbon Impacts of 30 Buildings. Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington. Seattle, WA. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/51287.
Citation
Benke, B., Roberts, M., Lewis, M., Shen, Y., Carlisle, S., Chafart, M., and Simonen, K. (2024). The California Carbon Report: Six Key Takeaways for Policymakers. Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington. Seattle, WA. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/51415