Imagine making decisions for your building portfolio that lock in environmental, regulatory and social impacts for decades. With buildings accounting for nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the stakes are higher than ever. Embodied carbon alone contributes 11% of those emissions—a figure expected to equal operational carbon’s impact by 2050. Unlike operational carbon, which can be reduced over time, embodied carbon is a one-time impact locked in at construction, directly influencing outcomes across a complex ecosystem of supply chain throughputs.
As the world races to limit global warming to 1.5°C, global CO₂ emissions need to decline 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050. This urgency calls for focused action, particularly within the building industry, which is decarbonizing in alignment with these goals. Addressing embodied carbon through Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) before emissions are permanently locked in provides actionable insights throughout a building’s lifecycle, enabling design teams to guide clients in reducing impacts, optimizing material selection and future-proofing their investments.
This Insight Article highlights how integrating LCA into every phase of design and construction can reduce environmental impacts, enhance regulatory compliance and create lasting value. Whether you’re a developer, corporate leader or in the public sector, understanding and addressing embodied carbon is more than an environmental responsibility—it’s a pathway to measurable, reportable business success.
From Regulation to Market Advantage: The Industry’s Low-Carbon Shift
While mitigating climate change remains the overarching driver, regulatory shifts and evolving sustainability certifications are transforming how the building industry addresses embodied carbon globally. One of the most significant changes is the upcoming launch of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED® v5. Aligning with other standards, like BREEAM and the Living Building Challenge, LCA will for the first time become a prerequisite for certification. Similarly, the Canada Green Building Council’s (CaGBC) Zero Carbon Building Standards (ZCBS) are setting embodied carbon budgets for projects so they can achieve net-zero emissions over time —450 kgCO2e/m² for tenanted buildings and 350 kgCO2e/m² for non-tenanted facilities. North American federal guidelines, which often reference LEED® and ZCBS, are driving a once fragmented marketplace towards industry harmonization by predicating meaningful carbon budgets onto publicly funded projects. This creates a market for low-impact products, leads by example and encourages alignment with local, state or provincial and federal initiatives.
For developers, these frameworks enhance property value by enabling low-carbon design decisions that attract tenants and investors. Certifications such as LEED® and Green Globes improve Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scoring in programs like GRESB, decarbonize interconnected supply chains and future-proof assets against regulatory shifts, including escalating carbon taxation. LCAs and innovations in construction materials, such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) and low-carbon concrete, are reshaping the industry, offering practical, visible ways to reduce emissions and optimize project outcomes in alignment with greening of individual assets. This also has broader impacts, reducing structural costs by making buildings lighter and lowering associated costs for labor and material transportation to jobsites. Faster installation can improve construction efficiency, while tenant-attracting features, such as exposed CLT, supports evidence-based approaches that incorporate biophilic materials to enhance spaces and user experiences.
The Rise of Product Transparency in Building Practices
Before the proliferation of transparency documents, selecting sustainable products for their total environmental impacts was challenging. LEED® v1 (1996) marked the first step toward building awareness and defining ‘green’ products, highlighting attributes such as recycled content, bio-based materials, FSC-certified wood and ’regional’ products—those manufactured within a 500-mile (800-km) radius.
In 2013, LEED® v4 introduced supply chain transparency, requiring manufacturers to publish ‘cradle-to-gate’ impacts of products through standardized Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), which include impacts from extraction, manufacturing, packaging and transportation–all steps necessary to bring a product to market. EPDs enable designers and procurement professionals to compare similar products based on their total environmental impacts. By extension, these insights now influence material choices across most individual building components and even whole buildings.
The Role of LCAs in Reducing Carbon at Every Project Phase
LCAs drive embodied carbon reduction by empowering teams to make data-driven decisions. They offer a structured method for assessing the environmental impact of materials and systems–from concept to construction. By integrating LCAs early and throughout each stage, using specialized tools such as One Click LCA and Tally, teams can evaluate carbon just as they do other environmental factors, establishing benchmarks and achieving overall reduction targets within schedule and budget.
Concept/Schematic Design (RIBA Stages 0-3): Setting early carbon budgets and reduction goals allows teams to prioritize sustainable materials selection. Considerations for major long lead-time systems can be leveraged to reduce transportation emissions, while understanding legislation requirements, such as the Buy Clean California Act (2022), helps teams focus on highest-carbon and highest-cost items for optimized results.
Detailed Design/Construction Documents (RIBA Stage 4): Once a schematic option is set, teams can specify individual product selections using EPDs to measure and refine the selected concept’s LCA. Products are rarely specified on a proprietary basis; therefore, researching three to five equivalent alternatives provides procurement with flexibility so budgets and carbon reduction targets remain aligned.
Procurement (RIBA Stages 5-6): Material submittals must be vetted for compliance with carbon goals, with the LCA updated after each submittal’s approval. The final carbon footprint will quantify the total reduction achieved compared to the baseline, reflecting the cumulative impact of multiple individual decisions.
This is a highly detailed process, requiring cooperation of all team members, and is essential for ensuring projects meet their targets.
LCAs in Action: From Individual Materials to Whole Buildings
Individual Product Selections: A new delivery center for a major government entity in Toronto, ON, was designed to meet the CaGBC Zero Carbon Building (ZCB) v3 standard. An LCA established an embodied carbon baseline of 621 kgCO₂e/m² —exceeding the 500 kgCO₂e/m² allowance and triggering a 10% minimum reduction requirement. Analysis identified extruded polystyrene (XPS) insulation as the single largest contributor. By substituting it with an alternative blowing agent (HFO), the team reduced the project’s embodied carbon by 22.8%, to 479 kgCO₂e/m², bringing it within the allowable threshold with minimal impact on the building’s design.
Whole Buildings: A higher educational facility in San Jose, CA, targeting LEED® v4 certification, used LCA to reduce embodied carbon. Specifically, the focus was to choose materials and products not visible to building users—such as insulation and gypsum board—ultimately extracting 18.14% of the embodied carbon from the project (403.6-tCO3e/m²), equivalent to 11.3-acres of forest sequestration. This is an example of meaningful carbon reduction without impacting building aesthetics.
Prototypes/National Brands: A major national retailer in the US optimized its prototype standards to minimize embodied carbon impact. The latest brand update achieved a 22.6% reduction in embodied carbon over baseline across all CSI Divisions and within the brand guidelines by selecting best-in-class material that account for regional logistics, sourcing variations in materials such as steel and concrete, and manufacturer takeback programs to increase circularity.
LCA, moving from voluntary to mandatory, marks a pivotal moment in the building industry’s evolution—empowering projects to meet carbon reduction targets, comply with regulations and drive global sustainability progress. This change positions LCAs as a vital process, requiring specialized knowledge and tools throughout project delivery to ensure every informed design and procurement decision aligns with sustainability goals and delivers measurable value in cost efficiency, market competitiveness and long-term positive impact.
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