Carbon Sequestering: Workshops

BEAM (Building Emissions Accounting for Materials) is a user-friendly spreadsheet tool that helps builders and designers in the low- and mid-rise construction industry calculate material carbon emissions (LCA phases A1-A3) for their buildings. This session will walk participants through the methodology behind BEAM and highlight some of its main features, what it can do and where its limitations lie. Participants will see how BEAM can be used to compare materials, assemblies and/or whole building models and provide context for the results.

Operational Carbon emissions due to building energy use are a key contributor to global climate change and designers should work to reduce these emissions in all projects. The Passive House Planning Package is incredibly useful at estimating building energy-use, but how do we effectively translate those results into operational carbon emissions?

This session will look at the key outputs from the PHPP relevant to carbon-emission modeling, and review the process for converting these energy-usage values into CO2-equivalent emissions. We will discuss the nature and structure of the US utility grids, where to find reliable grid-emissions data for your region, and best practice for calculating building-scale emissions. We will also discuss where the PHPP assumptions and defaults (hot-water, plug-loads, occupancy, etc) may need to be adjusted in order to deliver useful results. We will finish by briefly looking at more advanced topics such as marginal-emissions modeling and considerations around mechanical system components and in-site renewable energy generation.

This introductory session will cover the basics of embodied carbon frameworks, methods, and compare the benefits and drawbacks of the common tools EC3, Tally and OneClick LCA.