A recent report from the Rocky Mountain Institute has highlighted low-cost and no-cost solutions for reducing embodied carbon in buildings during a project’s design and construction phases.

The report, Reducing Embodied Carbon in Buildings: Low-Cost, High-Value Opportunities, demonstrates how applying these solutions could deliver an embodied carbon savings potential of 24% – 46% at cost premiums of less than 1% in case studies of three common building types.

The report also explores how embodied carbon reductions can often:

• reduce material use and project costs,
• reduce energy consumption in raw material extraction, manufacturing, and transportation,
• help to meet green building certification requirements, and
• better position building owners for future code or policy changes that incentivize or require low embodied carbon.

The report provides specific recommendations to help architects, contractors, building owners, engineers, and others to reduce embodied carbon significantly at little to no additional up-front cost, using strategies and materials available today. The report also points to next-generation solutions that could drive even greater reductions.

More information here