Net-zero emissions is a goal of many companies and government entities in the battle against climate change.
But instead of trying to balance carbon dioxide emissions somewhere in a building system by removing equal parts elsewhere, facilities leaders must start emphasizing net sequestration or reducing emissions from the atmosphere if the climate battle is to be won.
During an education session at the Chicago Build Show in October, a panel of subject matter experts discussed what the next wave of decarbonization will look like as more companies and institutions hop on board. The concept of reducing emissions was the session’s main topic of conversation.
“Net zero is about not inflicting more harm and getting to a point where at least we’re not putting more net carbon into the atmosphere,” says Eric Davis, deputy director, Cook County Bureau of Asset Management. “That’s not enough. If you’re not talking about net sequestration, you’re not paying attention when you do life cycle cost assessments about what happens at the end of a project’s life in terms of recyclability and materials.”
Since buildings contribute to about 40 percent of the world’s energy use, those same institutional and commercial facilities are the best places to start reducing carbon emissions. And while low-hanging fruit such as installing LED lighting and more efficient HVAC systems are obvious fixes, more facility managers are starting to take a closer look at the ingredients inside the materials used to construct buildings, or embodied carbon.
And the No. 1 impactor of carbon emissions is concrete.
“Data shows that you can get out 25 percent of the carbon output just by changing the admixtures in concrete,” says Davis, who is also pursuing a post-graduate research degree for sustainability specifically on decarbonization at Cambridge University. He encouraged building owners, architects and designers to specify low-emission carbon for projects.
“You have to do it from an attitude of we’ve got to start getting carbon out of the atmosphere, not just putting less into it,” he says.
Another panelist recently worked on a project where a life-cycle assessment significantly pared the embodied carbon of a building by specifying a lower carbon concrete.
“As architects, we now have access to the data to know what’s in every material so that we can specify better products, and often it doesn’t end up costing extra money to do so,” says Sarah Beardsley, associate principal for SCB. “There is also a ton of embodied energy in glass and coatings. It’s very heavy on the structure, so there are new products being developed. Many companies are working on vacuum insulated glass.”
Dave Lubach is the executive editor for the facilities market.
