Embodied carbon: 40% of emissions that no one counted

Up to 40% of the carbon a building produces over its lifetime is hidden in its materials. It is the greatest margin for improvement and, for years, the most ignored.

Embodied carbon is what is generated in the extraction, manufacture and transport of construction products, plus what comes from the installation and, finally, its dismantling. Unlike the energy consumption in use, it is not seen and does not appear on any bill, but it is equally present in every cubic meter of concrete, in every ton of steel and in every square meter of insulation.

This impact can be significantly reduced with technical decisions: choosing materials with a low footprint, optimizing structural sections to use less mass, prioritizing products with recycled content and choosing solutions that can be reused or recycled at the end of their useful life. Some renewable materials, such as sustainably sourced wood, can store more carbon than they emit during their production.

For a manufacturer, knowing and declaring the footprint of their products through an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is no longer an optional added value to become a market requirement: it is the data that specifiers and construction companies need to justify the footprint of the entire building.

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