Thursday September 22nd, 2022
12pm – 1:30pm
1.5 LU/HSW (pending approval)
Qualifies for Zero Net Carbon Design Mandatory Continuing Education. Certificate of completion will be provided to those who stay on and watch the webinar live.
Carmen Suero, Associate AIA — Principal with GPCO
David Arkin, AIA — Principal | Arkin Tilt Architects
While reducing the operational carbon impacts of structures is important, focus has turned to the impacts of material choices and construction itself – the embodied carbon of a building from extraction, processing, and assembly of materials. This is especially important in California given the relatively low carbon intensity of our grid-supplied electricity. An all-electric, grid-harmonized building will have low operational carbon emissions in California because of our electric grid’s cleaner energy mix. Thus, the need to shift focus toward embodied carbon.
The AIA 2030 Commitment’s Design Data Exchange (DDx) added reporting of embodied carbon in 2021. In this session, David Arkin outlines the basics of embodied carbon, discusses materials that have low embodied carbon or store carbon, and introduces a range of tools for measuring your project’s kilograms of CO2 emitted per meter squared. Examples of carbon storing materials and the range of tools available for measuring embodied carbon will be shared.
The presentation will include challenges to answer questions regarding embodied carbon and climate impacts, such as: ‘Name the earth’s five carbon sinks’, ‘What process drives the sequestration of carbon in plants and soil’, and ‘Other than wood, what bio-based resources are potential carbon storing building materials’, to name a few.
