As a leader in design and construction software solutions for many high–emissions industries, Autodesk recognizes the vital importance of reducing carbon. This reality has AEC industries focused on the importance of making smarter choices around building materials, an option not readily available until today. Over the last year, we’ve worked with the Carbon Leadership Forum, in collaboration with Skanska, C Change Labs and nearly 50 partners, to create the Embodied Carbon in Construction (“EC3”) tool, launched today at the Greenbuild Expo in Atlanta, and now available in public beta.
The impact of the built environment is undeniable—it contributes almost 40% of CO2 emissions worldwide. And as global growth continues, it’s estimated that between today and 2060, the amount of building floorspace will double. That’s equivalent to building an entire New York City every month for 40 years. Moreover, at least half of the carbon footprint of these new buildings will take the form of embodied carbon— the greenhouse gas emitted in the building material supply chain, including raw material extraction, transport, refining, and manufacturing of building materials. So how can we mitigate the proliferation of embodied carbon? To date, the industry has struggled to understand and measure it in their projects. For example, two materials can look identical and perform the same, but have extremely different amounts of embodied carbon; a fully recycled steel beam from a renewably-powered electric arc furnace and a virgin steel beam from a coal-fired furnace may be superficially identical, but radically different in their impacts to climate.
The EC3 tool takes data from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to align, assess, and present the embodied carbon impacts in a way that’s easy to use and act upon. This solution enables the building industry to easily access and view material carbon emissions data, allowing them to make carbon-smart choices during material specification and procurement. What would have taken days by experts can now be done in minutes by general practitioners.
Screenshot of embodied carbon data as shown in the BIM 360 Model Viewer
A rendering of Microsoft’s Redmond campus modernization project.