Decarbonizing buildings and infrastructure is one of our biggest opportunities to solve the climate crisis. Over the last 14 years, the Carbon Leadership Forum has been raising awareness and propelling action to ensure that the often neglected, yet highly impactful, GHG emissions attributed to building materials and construction practices (embodied carbon) are dramatically reduced to create a just and thriving future. Thanks to the collective leadership of CLF, industry practitioners, policymakers and others, we are beginning to witness significant progress.

In recognition of unprecedented recent momentum, CLF is making changes to our organizational structure and leadership that will enable us to provide resources and support at the scale needed to reverse climate change.

Since its inception, CLF has been led by Kate Simonen under the umbrella of the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. Beginning in March, 2024, we are expanding our influence and impact by creating two entities:

le Forum du leadership carbone is becoming an independent nonprofit organization to double down on our urgent research, education, and cross-sector collaboration that drives the data, tools, and policy changes needed to eliminate embodied carbon from buildings and infrastructure. Kate Simonen will oversee CLF as board chair, while organizational management will be led by Anthony Hickling as CLF’s new executive director and Meghan Lewis as CLF’s new program director.

At the same time, Kate will maintain an academic research group at the UW College of Built Environments under the newly named Life Cycle Lab to lead embodied carbon and life cycle assessment research that informs policy and practice. The Life Cycle Lab will support the next generation of researchers and pursue critical embodied carbon research with an increased focus on academic publications. The Life Cycle Lab will remain a strong, collaborative partner with the CLF.

This will be a gradual transition; both entities will continue to work together over the coming year and beyond to determine long-term staffing and work distribution.

We are grateful for our long-standing relationship with the University of Washington and are excited about our ongoing and evolving partnership. We believe both organizations will allow us to capitalize on unprecedented, time-sensitive opportunities to support the speed of decarbonization required to meet global climate goals. We look forward to working with our many partners in this new capacity to achieve our vision of a transformed, decarbonized building industry — creating better buildings for a better planet.