4 Big Questions as Building Codes Consider Embodied Carbon

Published by BuildingGreen: The urgency of curbing embodied carbon, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with building materials, continues to escalate. Voluntary rating systems have been working away at the issue for more than a decade.

“We know carbon emitted from the production of products is a hazard associated with the built environment,” agreed Webly Bowles, AIA, associate director of codes and policies at New Buildings Institute (NBI). “A lot of people will interpret that to only mean fire and life safety,” she added, but NBI thinks “we can include CO2 requirements in the same section that is already laid out in the building code. We don’t need new regulations.”