Structural Material Quantities And Embodied Carbon Coefficients: Challenges And Opportunities

Many innovations in recent decades have attempted to lower the operational energy use of buildings, which has increased the percentage of embodied energy in the life cycle of structures. Despite a growing interest in this field, practitioners still need an embodied carbon estimator, an agreement on the appropriate Embodied Carbon Coefficient (ECC expressed in kg-CO₂e / kgmaterial) standards and the collection of material quantities in building structures.

This paper defines the challenges in obtaining the material quantities and estimating the embodied carbon of structural materials. By critically reviewing existing efforts and interviewing several leading design firms, this paper aims to build literacy on challenges and opportunities in obtaining the embodied carbon of buildings. Two primary variables are analyzed: the material quantities (kgmaterial / m²) and the ECCs. The outcome will give confidence in the Global Warming Potential (GWP measured in kg-CO₂e / m²) of buildings.

The main challenges consist of creating incentives for data collection, identifying default ECC values per location and marrying transparency and intellectual ownership protection. The main opportunities are generating large amounts of data from Building Information Models, proposing an agreement on ECC ranges and outlining a unified methodology for the definition of reference buildings.