Historically, policies and best practices for green building and sustainable architecture have focused almost exclusively on operational energy and, by implication, operational carbon emissions.1 However, a growing body of research substantiates the significance of embodied carbon relative to operational carbon, particularly when considering global carbon reduction goals.2 To keep global warming within a 1.5-degree Celsius limit, total emissions from the built environment must be reduced by 45% before 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050.3 Understanding that material carbon emissions occur before the operational life of a building even begins, coupled with the speed and scale of development currently underway, reducing these up-front emissions is critical. While new tools4 are making it easier to prioritize carbon emissions reductions, there is still a dearth of research demonstrating how to bal¬ance embodied carbon and operational carbon during the design process. This case study begins to fill this gap in the research by presenting the outcomes of a recent university-based design-build program that prioritized designing for low-energy and low-carbon emissions in small-scale housing.
Williams et al. (Sun,) studied this question.