What is Embodied Carbon?

Graduate Engineer JP Liban breaks down how to determine embodied carbon across a project's life cycle in about 90 seconds.

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Hi, my name is JP Liban, and I'm an environmental engineer-in-training within Dewberry’s sustainability consulting group. In this video, I'll answer the question, what is embodied carbon and how is it quantified? Embodied carbon is the cumulative emissions impact of a project's life cycle, excluding the impact of the day-to-day operations. A project's life cycle consists of four project stages. First is the product stage. The product stage is the most carbon intensive stage as it encompasses material extraction, transportation, and manufacturing. The high carbon intensity is due to large amounts of energy, water, and resources needed to create typical building materials like asphalt, concrete, and steel. Second is the construction stage. The construction stage refers to emissions related to the construction vehicle operations, transportation, and other construction processes. Third, the use stage refers to the emissions related to the maintenance, repair, replacement or refurbishment of the project. As a reminder, when calculating embodied carbon, this is a separate analysis from the operational energy and water use of the project. Finally, the end of life stage is the decommissioning of the project and disposal of materials. Analyzing the embodied carbon from the first product stage is typically called cradle-to-gate analysis. Analyzing all four stages from product to end of life is referred to as cradle-to-grave analysis. By collecting data from each of the project stages, we can conduct a life cycle analysis to determine the net embodied carbon of a project and create a proper project carbon life cycle. Thank you.

Видео What is Embodied Carbon? канала Dewberry