Carbon Reflections

Change is the One True Constant

At the Carbon Leadership Forum, we are an almost entirely remote workplace. To foster collaboration and strengthen working relationships, we meet in person twice a year for about a week. We discuss strategy, organizational management, and other topics of importance during the season we’re in. CLF just had its fall retreat, and change seemed to be a recurring theme in our conversation. In sticking with that…

Change is the one true constant. This thought has personally been a grounding force for me in times of life where my direction did not seem certain. To me it seems that the pursuit of certainty in life will lead to much more disappointment and despair than anything else; it just doesn’t match-up to the lived experiences of untimely passings, Covid, and other life-altering events that have come my way from out of the blue.

Read Chad's Essay
Beth Tomlinson
Moving Toward Holistic Total Carbon Accounting for Buildings

by Beth Tomlinson
Discipline Leader, Carbon and Climate, Stantec

How will a new standard on whole life carbon emissions influence the built environment? ASHRAE/ICC Standard 240P looks at embodied carbon.

A key change is coming soon—and it will drive everything in our building industry going forward. It’s going to flip building performance expectations on their head. A new standard co-published by ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) and ICC (International Code Council) will revolutionize the built environment.

Lee mas

Webinar: Advancing the LCA Ecosystem

A Policy-Focused Roadmap for Reducing Embodied Carbon

In this September webinar, CLF Senior Researcher Meghan Lewis and CLF Researcher Brook Walsman laid out the conditions and prospects for an “ideal” LCA ecosystem, optimized for policy:

  • 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 the carbon footprints of products or projects, not differences in the data, tools, and methodologies used by practitioners.
  • Globally harmonized to streamline the use of LCA data and tools across borders and sectors.
  • Keep pace with new materials, technologies, and processes to better track and support decarbonization through filling gaps in standards, data, and tools to explore and measure new and alternative materials and technologies.
Video Recording of LCA Ecosystem Webinar
Kate and hwe bullhorn
Kate Simonen: The Edward and Mary Allen Lecture in Structural Design at MIT, November 2, 2023

Kate delivered the Allen Lecture, organized by MIT's Building Technology group as part of the MIT Fall 2023 Architecture Lecture Series in Cambridge Massachusetts. Professor Simonen is the founding director of the Carbon Leadership Forum and Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington. Her lecture recounts the history of the CLF and the movement to understand, report and radically reduce embodied carbon in buildings, materials, and infrastructure.

Watch Kate's Lecture
Eighth Quarterly Forum — A Year in Review
December 7, 2023

Join the MEP 2040 team with your peers and partners for this 8th quarterly 90-minute meeting with MEP 2040 signatory firms and supporting organizations. 

As we come to the close of our second year gathering the MEP2040 community, please join us for a celebration of achievements to date and a roadmap for next steps. We're looking forward to hearing from all supporters and signatories - what has changed most over the past two years in your work, what do you need the most from this community, and how you're thinking about tracking and reporting progress as well as sharing lessons learned. 

Register Now
Embodied Carbon Harmonization and Optimization

AEC industry organizations are increasingly reporting built environment embodied carbon emissions. Variations in life cycle assessment (LCA) scope, methodology, terminology, and other factors result in inconsistent reporting that impedes comparison, benchmarking, or setting reduction targets.

These limitations hold the industry back from more rapid adoption of embodied carbon measurement and management practices.

The Project

Following years of collaboration amongst various individual groups, built environment industry leaders came together in March 2023 in Seattle, with recurring meetings since, to discuss a potential coalition to accelerate and strategize how to rapidly reduce embodied carbon in the built environment.

As organizations currently or imminently gathering embodied carbon data from the built environment industry, creating tools and resources, and building awareness about this critical issue, we believe that we can move faster together.

Visit the ECHO Project
Announcing a New Effort to Educate a New Generation of Architects and Engineers about Embodied Carbon

BuildWell is a nonprofit multimedia company that informs and inspires the design and building industries to embrace climate-friendly practices.The content BuildWell will produce and distribute aims to make low-carbon design and construction inviting, easy, and practical. This new effort needs your help to get off the ground! 

Learn More about BuildWell

Impacto de los miembros

What is your personal motivation for addressing climate change, and what are you and your organization doing to help reduce embodied carbon emissions?

Aurora Jensen

Embodied Carbon Lead, Brightworks Sustainability

Read the Answer
https://carbonleadershipforum.org/member-impact-november-2023/#mikaela
Mikaela
DeRousseau

Data and Methodology Manager, Building Transparency

Read the Answer
jesce walz

Carbon & Circularity Research Lead, Perkins & Will

Read the Answer

About the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington

Quienes somos

  • The Carbon Leadership Forum accelerates transformation of the building sector to radically reduce the embodied carbon in building materials and construction.
  • We pioneer research, create resources, foster cross-sector collaboration, and incubate member-led initiatives to bring embodied carbon emissions of buildings down to zero.
  • We are architects, engineers, contractors, material suppliers, building owners, and policymakers who care about the future and take bold steps to eliminate embodied carbon from buildings and infrastructure.

www.carbonleadershipforum.org

© Copyright 2023

Foro de liderazgo de carbono

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Oakland, California 94619-5726
Estados Unidos


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