Committee on the Environment: Quantifying Total Carbon for Smart Reuse

In the race to a net zero future, existing buildings are a critical and often overlooked asset. High performance design strategies, analyses, and technologies focus predominantly on new construction; however, the roughly 28% of global carbon emissions are associated with operations of existing buildings. Building reuse presents the opportunities to dramatically reduce these operational emissions while simultaneously avoiding the high embodied carbon footprint of new construction; these strategies lead to carbon reductions in the near term when they make the largest contribution toward meeting our global carbon budget rather than over the full life of a building. This presentation will present examples of how to evaluate retrofit decisions to reduce total carbon footprint and how to quantify the carbon savings of reusing existing buildings compared to new construction.