The embodied carbon policy landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years. This month’s spotlight will highlight two valuable resources available for engineers considering the impact of embodied carbon in their projects. The first is a policy map developed by the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF). The policy map is a useful tool that can be used by engineers to identify embodied carbon policies at the Federal, state, and local levels. The CLF policy map has recently been added to the SE 2050 website and will be regularly updated to reflect policies that are relevant to structural engineers.
The second resource is the CLF North American Material Baselines Report, released in April 2023, which provides a snapshot of the state of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for North American-produced building materials. The CLF Baseline values represent an estimate of industry-average GHG emissions for construction materials manufactured in North America. Each material category has a detailed appendix that includes a description of the embodied carbon impacts, the available EPDs, and summary statistics. The report can be viewed on the CLF website.
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