Perspectives on High Performance Buildings

The Future of Carbon in Buildings

By Shana Longo, December 2021


The release of previously buried carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels is spurring a global shift in climate zones with far reaching impacts on infrastructure, humans, and ecosystems. You’re likely familiar with the Greenhouse Effect, a phenomenon that traps heat at just the right amount to create a life-sustaining warming effect on Earth. However, when too much heat is trapped and reflected to land and oceans, weather patterns distort; larger storms are more likely to form, droughts and heat waves, cold snaps and rain patterns are increasingly common, and other core elements related to the water cycle shift as well, making it far more difficult to reliably plan our future cities and towns. 

In the U.S., since 1990, buildings have been responsible for 35-40% of energy-related global carbon emissions. Roughly 28% of that is operational pertaining to the energy used to power the building after construction; approximately 15% is embodied carbon.  Embodied carbon comes from the emissions released during the creation of the building products and systems. The material inputs from their manufacturers have a carbon footprint. The combined carbon emissions amount to the total embodied carbon of that product. Often the generation of these carbon emissions is unaccounted for by the user and the maker. 

Actions are being taken at the state and federal levels to support better understanding of embodied carbon and ultimately, carbon reduction. The federal CLEAN Future Act plan and state-wide Buy Clean Act procurement policy aim to implement low-carbon construction purchasing requirements to address greenhouse gas emissions from construction materials. The policies use disclosure, incentives, and standards to shift toward low-carbon options. Buy Clean can be applied at the federal, state, or local level and be used by private building owners. Disclosure requirements within these policies include Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).

EPDs are also being used at the product and building level to account for and drive reductions of embodied carbon emissions. Manufacturers can use the data within EPDs to identify and implement carbon reduction opportunities, and at the building level, project teams can leverage tools such as the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) to inform their purchasing decisions. 

The Alliance to Save Energy's article “Decarbonizing Buildings Through Energy Efficiency,” presents a call to action for the building industry to take steps to reach net zero carbon emissions for new and existing buildings by 2050 as part of the Paris Agreement. This initiative is in line with stretch code trends, such as National Building Institute’s new Building Decarbonization Code, and works as an overlay to the 2021 IECC for residential and commercial construction projects to help states and cities seeking to mitigate carbon emissions originating from energy use in the built environment.
 

Trend Spotlight: Materials Reduce Carbon Footprints

A recent materials trend in embodied carbon is designing mass timber buildings. Mass timber is a category of building framing characterized by using large solid wood panels for wall, floor, and roof construction. It brings nature indoors and evokes feelings of health and happiness in building occupants. Studies show mass timber buildings weigh about one-fifth of comparable concrete buildings, and therefore have smaller foundations, less inertial seismic forces, and reduced embodied energy. 

Mass timber is widely being acknowledged as a potential sustainable alternative to traditional materials like concrete. Its weight, construction time, and costs are just some of the factors that are attracting more architects to make use of it in projects. Wood, in general, uses less energy to produce than steel or concrete (when comparing the weight of the materials) and has inherent carbon sequestration attributes. Wood greenhouse gas emissions are an estimated 26% lower than steel and 50% less than concrete. However, as with most building materials, ensuring they contribute to overall sustainability requires a thorough understanding of the entire supply chain of this product. Sustainable forestry management and improved harvesting methods will play an important role in the continued success of mass timber. 

As of March 2020, 784 mass timber projects have been constructed or designed in the US since 2013 for multi-family, commercial, or institutional construction. The opportunity is ripe for the role of electrical manufacturers, starting at the early stages of Design Development. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems such as infloor systems, under/above finished floor raceway and power poles, as well as other prefabricated solutions, limit onsite waste as well as the number of people needed at the jobsite -- a benefit especially felt during a pandemic.
 

Evolutions in Building Design

The international community has established an aggressive but achievable target to keep global mean temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than 1900 levels, lowering carbon emissions along the way. The latest guidance from the International Panel on Climate Change has declared 2030 as the last year to reset the world’s emissions away from the business-as-usual pathway, which would lead to 4 degrees Celsius of warming. Even at 1.5 degrees increase the impacts will be drastic: 

• 8% loss of plant species
• 3% reduction in crop yields
• .40 meter increase in sea levels by 2100
• 7% of ecosystems shift to a new biome

The goal is to go no higher than 450 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, and in 2019, it reached 409.8 ppm. Decarbonization of buildings, homes, electricity generation and vehicles is vital and necessary. 

Products in the electrical, lighting, shading, advanced technologies, data centers and building automation are particularly well suited to assist with meeting the carbon management goals of an increasingly smart building. Products in these categories can turn the lights and power switches off for you, manage the shades, HVAC, lighting and more through preprogrammed design. Appropriate power management of commercial equipment can also be managed automatically, and remotely. Combined, the electrical infrastructure and system in a building is the leading pathway to increase electrification, manage energy sources, and reduce the building’s overall impact on climate change. 

Opportunities for advanced networked controls, data management systems and smart devices to enable building systems' efficiency help to fulfill decarbonization goals. In addition to adopting aggressive energy savings goals, existing and new facilities have a substantial opportunity to adopt distributed energy resources (DERs) such as on-site solar and wind to meet their ongoing energy needs. At the same time, electrification of the energy grid is instrumental in decarbonizing building energy resources. Solar and wind generation is expected to double in the next 5 years, providing a large opportunity for buildings to move away from dirty fossil fuels.
 

Taking Corporate Action

Legrand Signs Open Letter to Biden Administration Calling for Ambitious Carbon Emissions Reductions

After COP26, President Biden’s Build Back Better bill illustrates a commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions 50-52 percent below 2005 levels in 2030, reaching a 100% carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035, and achieving a net-zero economy by no later than 2050. Proposed infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing initiatives would provide another route to reducing both operational and embodied carbon.  

In April 2021, along with more than 400 businesses and investors, Legrand signed an open letter urging the Biden Administration to adopt the ambitious yet attainable target of cutting GHG emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. Known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), this target is aligned with the Paris Agreement and climate science, and sets the US on a path to achieve net-zero emissions by no later than 2050. This public letter was organized by We Mean Business and partners to mobilize companies to publicly support a NDC of 50% by 2030.

At the 2021 Leader’s Summit on Climate President Biden officially announced the bold plan committing to reach the NDC climate goals for 2030 and 2050. This seeks to effectively keep average global temperature increases below the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold which scientists have long stated as necessary to avoid the most catastrophic climate change scenarios.

Legrand has also committed to supporting these climate goals. As part of our Corporate Social Responsibility roadmap, we have science-based targets which illustrate our commitment to setting targets in alignment with the business ambition for 1.5°C.