By Rachelle Habchi
Low Carbon Product Lead, Carbon Leadership Forum
I grew up in San Diego, California and never fully appreciated the insulated bubble of a cultural and natural ecosystem that it was until I moved out for college. Mostly, maybe, because my time was consumed by shuttling between daily Taekwondo practice, Saturday Arabic School, and Sunday post-mass lunches with family friends that lasted four hours at a minimum. But who knows? I spent most of my formative years in Irvine, working through my Bachelors and Masters. What started as an interest in Biology turned to Urban Design, Physics, and Civil Engineering. Intricate yet intuitive concepts in the mechanics of materials are what drew me into the world of structural engineering. For me, it was just the right ratio of struggle to dopamine-hit I was looking for.
My decision to dedicate my studies to structural engineering started a nearly 10-year journey from researching the adequacy of simulated ground motions to working as a structural engineer on a variety of buildings ranging from education, multi-family residential, and mixed-use development, to high-rise construction. Through that journey, I started to get involved with the SEAOSC Sustainable Design Committee and the CLF-LA Hub. I helped my previous firm commit to SE2050 and eventually became Director of Sustainability. The more I learned about embodied carbon and the environmental impacts of the built environment, the more I felt compelled to help mitigate them. By coalescing structural engineering with embodied carbon optimization, I found a way to experience that perfect ratio of struggle to dopamine hit.
I’m so excited to have the opportunity to work at CLF as a Low Carbon Product Lead. Through this position, I will dive deeper into Product LCAs, focused on researching and developing strategies to minimize the embodied carbon of building materials throughout their life cycle. I’ll be working on the team to refine existing methodologies to accurately measure and report the environmental impacts of construction materials. This research and data analysis will help inform how CLF reports material baselines in subsequent published reports and is intended to provide a helpful guide for industry practitioners, policymakers, and stakeholders. The goal is to make building decarbonization, at the product level, more accurate, understandable, and implementable. Armed with more accurate and easy-to-digest information, more people will have the power to reduce embodied carbon and will assume a collective responsibility to drive meaningful and impactful reductions.
One of the things I like most about working in the sustainability world is the community-based approach that seems to prevail. It stems from a foundational understanding that we are all in this together. Many will be more affected by climate change than others, but we cannot escape the collective consequences of not decarbonizing our economy quickly and effectively. Investors following the UN’s PRI program will invariably be a part of the solution, but policy will be our biggest and most impactful lever. Policymakers need accurate data to make informed decisions that will positively affect their constituents.Â
One of the reasons I’m so excited to be a part of the CLF team is that the projects we work on incorporate data analysis and conclusions, benchmark reports, and baseline reports. This integrated approach will allow policymakers to make more informed decisions to reduce embodied carbon. I’m looking forward to using my experience as a structural engineer to drive further meaningful reductions.
The more I learned about embodied carbon and the environmental impacts of the built environment, the more I felt compelled to help mitigate them. By coalescing structural engineering with embodied carbon optimization, I found a way to experience that perfect ratio of struggle to dopamine hit.
