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The Embodied Carbon Benchmark Report

The Embodied Carbon Benchmark Report

Embodied Carbon Benchmarks Report

Embodied Carbon Budgets and Analysis of 292 Buildings in the US and Canada

 

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The latest report from the CLF WBLCA Benchmark Study V2, which established embodied carbon budgets for buildings and explores the drivers of high and low carbon projects.

About

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector has a major role to play in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of the built environment. Much of the near-term impact of buildings will be from embodied carbon due to the imminent timing and scale of embodied emissions. Given this opportunity, gauging the typical magnitude of the embodied carbon of buildings is a critical step to understanding current building practices and mapping a pathway towards reduction.

In this report, we fill a critical gap within the design and construction industry by providing bottom-up, empirically derived embodied carbon benchmarks for buildings in the US and Canada to aid in the development of WBLCA policies and programs. Additionally, we explored drivers and trends of the embodied carbon impacts of buildings across multiple project features to increase knowledge in the industry and inform building decarbonization efforts. All of this was done using one of the richest and most methodologically consistent datasets of WBLCA results currently available for North America. Thus, the benchmarks and findings from this report provide greater consistency and reliability than previous studies and offer clearer and more actionable pathways to industry-wide decarbonization.

Authors

The individuals from the Carbon Leadership Forum

  • Brad Benke, Manager Low Carbon Buildings
  • Aurora Jensen, Senior Manager Low Carbon Buildings
  • Meghan Lewis, Program Director

The individuals from the UW Life Cycle Lab who worked on this report are:

  • Manuel Chafart, Researcher
  • Kathrina Simonen, Professor

Published

April 2025

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the ClimateWorks Foundation. We would also like to thank the University of Washington Life Cycle Lab for developing the public benchmarking dataset that underpins this project. This research originated when the Carbon Leadership Forum, now an independent nonprofit, was hosted at the University of Washington. The research team would like to thank the University of Washington research staff who have contributed to this project over the past two years, especially:

  • Yang Shen, PhD, Researcher at the University of Washington Life Cycle Lab, for his assistance in developing the dataset and exploratory statistical analysis on the correlation between dataset features and embodied carbon intensities of projects that informed our methodology.
  • Milad Ashtiani, PhD, Researcher at the University of Washington Life Cycle Lab for his assistance in developing the dataset, exploratory analysis on the material use intensity and embodied carbon intensity of materials, and guidance on aggregation methods that informed our methodology.
  • Stephanie Carlisle, (former) Researcher at the University of Washington Life Cycle Lab for her initial project management of the study and technical assistance throughout.

Additionally, we would like to thank the individuals and respective firms who participated in the data collection and quality assurance process, this work would not have been possible without their incredible support and dedication to this project. These included: Arrowstreet Architects, Arup, BranchPattern, Brightworks Sustainability, Buro Happold, BVH Architecture, DCI Engineers, EHDD, Ellenzweig, Gensler, GGLO, Glumac, Group 14 Engineering, Ha/f Climate Design, HOK, KieranTimberlake, KPFF Consulting Engineers, Lake|Flato, LMN Architects, Mahlum Architects, Mead & Hunt, Inc., Mithun, Perkins&Will, reLoad Sustainable Design Inc., SERA Architects, Stok, The Green Engineer Inc., The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP., Walter P Moore, and ZGF Architects LLP.

Copyright

Published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Embodied Carbon Benchmark Report

Embodied Carbon Benchmarks Report

Embodied Carbon Budgets and Analysis of 292 Buildings in the US and Canada

 

Read Report

Citation

Benke, B., Jensen, A., Chafart, M., Simonen, K. and Lewis, M. (2025). The Embodied Carbon Benchmark Report: Embodied Carbon Budgets and Analysis of 292 Buildings in the US and Canada. Carbon Leadership Forum.

The CLF Benchmark Explorer

A tool created to better visualize the data created by the WBLCA Benchmark Study.

benchmark explorer
Benchmark Explorer

Resource Library

Embodied Carbon Policy Reduction Calculator

The Policy Reduction Calculator is a web-based tool developed by the Carbon Leadership Forum to provide policymakers with data-driven insights on low embodied carbon policies in North America.

Reclaimed and Reused: Recommended LCA Modeling Guidance to Support EPDs for Reused Construction Materials

Material reuse is one strategy for reducing the embodied carbon of construction. While the preparation of previously used materials for reuse has an environmental impact, it avoids many of the resource extraction and manufacturing impacts of building with newly manufactured products. Given the amount of demolition and deconstruction across North America (and beyond), there is a vast potential for material reuse to expand in scale. However, barriers to material reuse scaling exist.

DEQ Low Embodied Carbon Housing Program: Roadmap to Success

Embodied Carbon Pathways to 2050 for the United States, a collaboration between the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), RMI, and the University of Washington (UW) Life Cycle Lab, provides an assessment of embodied carbon from US construction materials and explores pathways to align with a 1.5°C global warming limit.

International Embodied Carbon Data Availability: A Review of Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Availability in Europe, China, and Australia

CLF completed a landscape analysis of product-level embodied carbon data availability in regions outside North America with the goals of: (i) understanding how LCA/EPD data availability varies globally; (ii) informing where targeted initiatives are needed to increase the availability of data; and (iii) determining whether adequate EPD data exists to develop CLF Material Baselines outside North America. This report summarizes our findings and provides initial insights into what data is available to inform low-carbon procurement efforts in Australia, China, and Europe.

The CLF Benchmark Explorer

Emissions from the operations of buildings and infrastructure are significant, well-understood contributors to national and global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the contribution of embodied carbon—emissions associated with the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal of construction materials across the life cycle of a building or asset—is neglected by comparison. Even at the global level, embodied carbon estimates are typically based on manufacturing emissions from the production of a handful of the highest-impact materials (e.g. concrete, steel, aluminum, and wood).

Embodied Carbon Pathways to 2050 for the United States

Embodied Carbon Pathways to 2050 for the United States, a collaboration between the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), RMI, and the University of Washington (UW) Life Cycle Lab, provides an assessment of embodied carbon from US construction materials and explores pathways to align with a 1.5°C global warming limit.

Washington State Carbon Emissions Estimation: 2025 – 2050

Emissions from the operations of buildings and infrastructure are significant, well-understood contributors to national and global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the contribution of embodied carbon—emissions associated with the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal of construction materials across the life cycle of a building or asset—is neglected by comparison. Even at the global level, embodied carbon estimates are typically based on manufacturing emissions from the production of a handful of the highest-impact materials (e.g. concrete, steel, aluminum, and wood).

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