Procurement of Low Carbon Construction Materials

A new pilot credit is available for LEED v4.1 called Procurement of Low Carbon Construction Materials (MRpc132). The pilot credit aims to reduce the embodied carbon of materials used in construction. The credit uses methodology developed by the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington, which aims to allow for comparability of life cycle assessment data by addressing and reducing uncertainty.

Compliance to the pilot credit can be documented using the new Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3), launched during the 2019 Greenbuild Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The free tool was conceived by Skanska USA and C Change Labs, and is being incubated by the Carbon Leadership Forum. The tool was designed to be used by building designers, contractors, owners, material suppliers and policymakers, and can be used in the design or procurement phases of a project. It contains thousands of digital environmental product declarations (EPDs) that allow owners and policy makers to access supply chain data to set embodied carbon baselines and reductions by enabling simple visualization of a project’s potential and realized embodied carbon impacts.

To assist with the launch, the Carbon Leadership Forum has produced the following documents:

• Embodied Carbon Facts and Figures
• EC3 Tool Product Brief
• EC3 Tool User Benefits
• EC3 Key Features
• EC3 Tool Primer for AEC Professionals

Figure 1: A Sankey Diagram that shows the possible carbon reductions within the value chain for the structural components. (Source: EC3).