The Carbon, The Whole Carbon, and Nothing But the Carbon

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Description:

Whole life carbon assessment (WLCA) is a rapidly evolving framework generating significant interest and momentum in the design industry. Its ultimate goal is to fully account for all building-related carbon emissions and provide valuable information to design and policy communities to direct efforts for reducing impacts and meeting climate targets. Emerging standards aim to fill gaps and harmonize modeling practices but WLCA is challenging, and often varies in complexity, rigor, and completeness, limiting its usefulness and comparability. Additionally, WLCA focuses solely on carbon emissions, ignoring other environmental and social impacts. In this session, we explore the challenges, opportunities, and limitations of WLCA through two exciting projects. First, researchers from the CLF and UC Berkeley present preliminary results, findings, and recommendations to advance WLCA based on an analysis of 30 real-world buildings in the State of California. This study explores the relationship between embodied and operational carbon over time, the types of comparisons, if any, that can be made using readily available industry data, and the gaps and limitations that need to be addressed to improve industry practices. Second, designers from Perkins Eastman and CMTA discuss the carbon impacts of John Lewis Elementary, a Net Zero Energy, LEED Platinum school. The design team presents a detailed analysis of its embodied and operational carbon footprint and evaluates the effectiveness of hypothetical design iterations to reduce its life cycle impacts. This study’s scope extends beyond what is typically addressed, including embodied emissions from MEP systems, interior finishes, and the temporal emissions intensity of the grid. This analysis offers a detailed examination of the drivers behind embodied and operational carbon emissions in educational facilities and opportunities for their reduction. Throughout these examples, we will discuss the pros and cons of WLCA and lessons learned to improve the comparability and usefulness of building scale assessments.