The Developer's Guide to Embodied Carbon

Report Summary: Reducing the emissions associated with the extraction, production, transportation, and disposal of building materials—also known as embodied carbon—is increasingly becoming a top priority for real estate professionals looking to advance sustainability goals and achieve net zero. These emissions are significant, contributing around 11 percent of global carbon emissions each year, and accounting for up to half a building’s total emissions over its lifetime. Most embodied emissions are released well before a building is constructed, meaning that those emissions are “locked in” and cannot be reduced over time. A smaller portion of emissions occurs while the building is in operation, with use of materials in fit-outs, equipment replacement, and renovations. As a result, reductions must take place throughout the full life cycle of a building—ideally from the earliest stages of development—to have the greatest impact.

Fortunately, there is a strong business case for real estate to address embodied carbon, and project teams that have successfully reduced embodied emissions have also experienced considerable financial benefits, such as enhanced building value, faster lease-ups, and reduced costs. In addition, a range of external pressures, including government regulations and demands from environmentally minded tenants and investors, is accelerating the industry’s focus on these previously overlooked emissions. Yet despite a growing sense of urgency across the industry, general awareness and understanding of the strategies for achieving deep reductions is limited.

Since owners and developers are responsible for catalyzing new developments and setting project requirements, they play a critical role in reducing embodied carbon across the industry. When a development team establishes clear embodied carbon reduction goals for a project, it sends a market demand signal for low-carbon products and approaches that others can follow. These early commitments are essential and help set the stage for reductions at later phases of development.

The right interventions implemented at the right time can help projects avoid significant embodied carbon emissions while meeting holistic sustainability goals and delivering value. The Developer’s Guide to Embodied Carbon: Intervention Points for Building Greener identifies when and how project teams can address embodied carbon during concept, design, construction, operations, and end of life, and features example projects that have implemented interventions to realize dramatic reductions.

How to Use This Resource

The Developer’s Guide to Embodied Carbon is a user manual for real estate developers and owners looking to reduce embodied carbon throughout all phases the development process. Users can navigate to the development phase that is most relevant for their project and explore opportunities for reducing embodied carbon during that phase and subsequent phases.

The graphic functions like an interactive website. For the best user experience, we recommend viewing the resource on a computer.

Expand the window below by clicking the “Full Screen” button in the lower right-hand corner. From there, users can view embodied carbon reduction strategies (“interventions”) by clicking on one of the development phases. Each development phase is composed of at least one subphase. For example, the Design phase is made up of four subphases: Pre-Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents. Each subphase is accompanied by a short profile of a real estate development project that demonstrates one or more of the recommended interventions.

Many of the interventions have supplementary information, links, or resources that can be accessed by clicking the text of the intervention. Navigate to different phases by clicking the buttons at the top of the screen. Click the “Home” button in the upper left corner of the resource to return to the first page.

Disclaimer

ULI acknowledges that not every project follows the standard real estate development, design, and construction process outlined in this resource. The timeline provided is simplified to provide users with general guidance that is relevant for most—but not all—real estate projects.

This resource was last updated in October 2024. Please report bugs or issues to [email protected].

Key Terms and Concepts

Embodied carbon: According to the Carbon Leadership Forum, embodied carbon refers to the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and disposal of construction materials used in buildings, roads, and other infrastructure.

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD): EPDs disclose LCA results for specific products, providing information to consumers about the environmental impact of building products. They are frequently thought of as material “nutrition labels” that report on a variety of life-cycle impacts, including global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, ozone depletion, and smog formation.

Life cycle assessment (LCA): An LCA is an analysis that evaluates the environmental impacts of products and services, covering their life cycle from raw material extraction to waste treatment.

Whole building LCA (WBLCA): WBLCAs measure the environmental impact of a whole building. However, it’s worth noting that currently, not all “whole” building LCAs include every component of a building in their scope. Many WBLCAs only include certain elements, such as structure and enclosure, and exclude other significant components such as mechanical, engineering, and plumbing systems and interiors.

Abbreviations

• EC3: Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator
• EPD: Environmental Product Declaration
• ESG: environmental, social, and governance
• GHG: greenhouse gas
• GIA: gross internal area
• GWP: global warming potential
• LCA: life cycle assessment
• LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
• MEP: mechanical, engineering, and plumbing
• RFP: request for proposals
• TI: tenant improvement
• WBLCA: whole building life cycle assessment

Acknowledgments

Research Partners / Project Advisors

Katie Mesia
Design Resilience Leader | Principal
Gensler

Abigail Young
Sustainability Strategist | Associate
Gensler

Reviewers

Jessica Bristow
Instructor
Yale School of Architecture

Pamela Conrad
Founder, Executive Director
Climate Positive Design

Emily Flynn
Product Research Lead
Tangible Materials Inc.

Meghan Lewis
Program Director
Carbon Leadership Forum

Jessie Templeton
Embodied Carbon Lead
Brightworks Sustainability

Lauren Wingo
Senior Structural Engineer
Arup

Frances Yang
Sustainable Materials Practice Leader
Arup

Project Profiles

Featured projects include:

• Portland International Airport Expansion, Portland, Oregon
• 80 M Street SE, Washington, D.C.
• The Gilbert, London, England
• Pacific Center, San Diego, California
• Kilroy Oyster Point, South San Francisco, California
• Metropolitan Park (Amazon HQ2), Arlington, Virginia
• Skanska Zero Emissions Construction Equipment Pilot Projects, Los Angeles, California, and Stockholm, Sweden
• Salesforce Benchmarking Study for Furniture and Mechanical, Engineering, and Plumbing Systems, Multiple locations
• Hang Lung Properties Gypsum Board Recycling Programs, Shanghai and Hangzhou, China