por Meghan Lewis
Senior Policy Researcher, CLF

The rapid growth of embodied carbon policies has created a unique opportunity to leverage current funding and interest to maximize the potential of LCA as a tool for decarbonization.

In this report, the CLF lays out steps to strengthen and build upon existing LCA standards, data sources, and tools for construction products, building, and infrastructure to optimize LCA as an effective policy tool for industrial and building decarbonization. The roadmap lays out a vision for an “ideal” LCA ecosystem for policy that is:

• Open and transparent through shifting the balance from proprietary data and models to open, high-quality data in public repositories and investing in open data infrastructure
• Accessible through expanded access to training, streamlined processes and tools for reporting, and financial support for those who really need it
• More comparable and reliable. Differences in LCA results should reflect differences in products or projects, rather than differences in data, tools, or practitioner choices.
• Globally harmonized to streamline the use of LCA data and tools across borders and sectors
• Keep pace with new materials, technologies, and processes by filling gaps in standards, data, and tools for new and alternative materials and technologies

I regard myself as an interdisciplinary engineer/researcher/learner—so my learning journey never ends. After completing my degree, I worked as a postdoc Research Fellow at George Mason University focused on the hot-spot applications of computer vision, deep learning, and time series analysis in different disciplines. Though my work was not obviously related to carbon, I’ve learned that it’s possible for me to understand much later how something in my work turned out to be valuable for me even when it didn’t seem so at first. Meanwhile, I got actively involved as a committee member for the SEI Sustainability Committee (ASCE), and as a Provisional Corresponding Member for several ASHRAE committees.My passion is to use interdisciplinary studies to achieve the goal of decarbonization.

by Beth Lavelle, Senior Associate, and Lindsey Kahler, Architectural/Sustainability Designer

SERA Architects has a long history of integrating performance analysis into our design work, including conceptual energy modeling, daylighting and solar analysis, as well as future climate projections. It was a natural evolution for our Sustainability Resources Group (SuRG) to take on the challenge of embodied carbon analysis of our projects and develop workflows to integrate the analysis into SERA’s design processes.

Inspired by our firm’s values, which highlight our responsibility as practitioners with significant opportunity to reduce emissions through mindful design and material selections, we at SERA began our journey of working to radically decarbonize our project work around 2019 by exploring whole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA) analysis tools like Tally and OneClick. In 2020 we began a process of analyzing our entire portfolio, expanding the work that we have done to report our operational energy for the 2030 Challenge since its inception.

The Carbon Leadership Forum issued the Challenge for MEP engineers to design all projects to meet net zero carbon goals by 2040. Over 100 firms have now signed on to join the movement.

The whole-carbon balance for energy-using MEP systems has been an elusive topic for many. As operational carbon continues to be a focus, our understanding of embodied carbon ramps up, and low-GWP refrigerants consistently face regulatory challenges, making informed decisions based on the whole picture is a complex problem that our industry has yet to solve. Please join us for MEP2040's next quarterly forum, where we will shed light on this complex topic and begin to identify a roadmap toward solutions.

The Seventh Quarterly Forum coming up on September 14, 2023 will focus on the whole-carbon balance between operational and embodied carbon for energy-using MEP systems.