Embodied Carbon Regulations Are Coming. The Real Estate Industry Can Get ahead With Improved Portfolio Carbon Accounting
The past 12 months have been a reckoning for the emissions from building materials and construction — otherwise known as embodied carbon.
According to RMI, California now requires disclosure and improvement of embodied carbon for all commercial buildings over 100,000 square feet. The City of Vancouver’s building code now requires that new developments be below a certain embodied carbon intensity figure.
The U.S. Green Building Council has shared its draft of LEED v5, which will have a much greater emphasis on embodied carbon, including embodied carbon caps for certain product categories.
Cities from Boston to Los Angeles are considering additional embodied carbon requirements for building permits. And that’s not even touching on requirements for companies that do business in the EU, where imported goods with higher carbon emissions will be taxed accordingly.
