The Total Carbon Study

The Bay Area Living Building Challenge Collaborative is excited to feature a presentation of "The Total Carbon Study," a report published by the Ecological Building Network, Integral Group, and Siegel & Strain Architects. Authors Megan White, Ted Van Der Linden and Larry Strain will present their findings.

The current "gold standard" for reducing emissions from buildings is to build new, net zero energy buildings – focusing on eliminating emissions associated with the operations phase. While this is an important strategy to reduce GHG emissions in the built environment, it does not address the two other major sources of building emissions from the embodied, upstream supply chain from building materials, and operating emissions from existing buildings.

For new buildings it is critical to focus on reducing embodied emissions and for existing buildings we need to focus on reducing operating emissions.  The case study reported nearly 70% avoided embodied carbon emissions associated with the building material supply chain when an existing building was renovated to net zero compared to new net zero construction. 

Hear more about this exciting study from the authors themselves!