Embodied and Operational Carbon: Decarbonization in Current and Future Building Design

Reducing carbon or decarbonization in building design has become critical effort in tackling climate change and improving our environment. While the previous effort has been focusing on operational carbon or reducing energy usage, designing to the whole life carbon design including embodied carbon should be the current practice now.

The presentation and panel discussion will discuss the whole life carbon design in building design especially in embodied carbon and its coupling to the operational carbon. Three different speakers with different backgrounds will discuss how we should implement the whole life carbon design in the building.

The implementation whole life carbon design shall include not only new buildings but also existing buildings. The existing buildings or renovation projects often have more advantages reducing embodied carbon and their operational carbon can be improved with proper design strategies. The speaker will share his experience and his rule of thumbs on how to reduce embodied energy in existing buildings and how to implement the whole life carbon design in architecture practices.

While in new buildings, high rise and tall buildings can be considered as the most difficult projects to achieve low carbon design with limited amount of roof to offset operational carbon. The second speaker will explain how to optimize the whole life carbon design in operational and embodied carbon. Urban Sequoia as a pathway to reduce the whole life carbon design in tall buildings will be presented. MEP and refrigerant impacts in carbon design will also be discussed.

In designing the whole life carbon design, we often rely on simulation tools to calculate operational carbon, using energy modeling tools, and embodied carbon. In the operational carbon, the process of modeling, data, and the result of modeling has been well-accepted. However, in embodied carbon, the process and data are relatively new. The third speaker will discuss data quality and reliability in an embodied carbon calculation tool. He will also discuss how we should interpret the results and their limitations.

Presented by: Larry Strain, FAIA (Principal, Siegel & Strain Architects), Luke Leung (Principal, Skidmore, Owing & Merrill), Panu Pasanen (CEO/ Founder, One Click LCA) and Eddy Santosa (Senior Building Performance Consultant, IMEG)

Date: Jan 20, 2022

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