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Project Resources

Concrete Resources

Here you’ll find a variety of resources to assist structural engineers in learning more about embodied carbon. You will find links to some of the leading information. If there is something else you need help on and don’t find it here, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll do our best to direct you to the answer!

Specifying Low-Carbon Impact Structural Materials

All structural materials have varying amounts of embodied carbon, so one strategy in reducing the embodied carbon in the structure is to specify structural materials with lesser carbon impacts. However, it is important to understand the effect of using lesser carbon-impact materials on the embodied carbon of the entire building. Structural engineers should be wary of inadvertently shifting the carbon burden to other materials due to use of lesser-carbon materials.

That being said, several industry associations have issued industry-average environmental product declarations (EPDs) for structural materials. For a given material, it may be useful to compare a specific product EPD versus its industry EPD. However, comparing EPD results from different product categories or materials should also be avoided. The following program operator websites list the most-current EPDs:

Embodied Carbon Resources

Primers:

Guides:

Articles:

BuildingGreen “The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It” https://www.buildinggreen.com/feature/urgency-embodied-carbon-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

Other Resources

There are many organizations that have done incredible work in producing online resources, including websites, papers, and studies in the area of embodied carbon. Though we cannot possibly list them all we highly recommend you access the following.

Websites:

Literature:

LCA Tools:

LCA software that is used by LCA practitioners requires in-depth knowledge of LCA methods, standards, and practices. This software is often too complex to be useful for structural engineers on a day-to-day basis. Thus, several tools have been developed for estimating the embodied carbon impacts of buildings. Although we don’t endorse any tool, the following are commercially available. Structural engineers are encouraged to understand the underlying assumptions and limitations of each simplified tool.

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