CA52 - Carbon Leadership
SBTi drama, CLF Embodied Carbon Awards, a big thank you, and Mass Timber Group.
NEWSWORTHY
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THE SPONSOR
Thanks to The Timber Group for generously supporting this issue.
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THE TOPIC
Last week I had the privilege to attend the second annual Embodied Carbon Awards in Vancouver.
Two things I want to cover in todays issue:
1 - An interesting project we submitted
2 - A Thank You
The event was powered by an organization called ZEIC through CLF British Columbia.
It’s a night to celebrate the projects that are taking a lead on embodied carbon and reducing their impact.
Beyond my personal interests in carbon reduction, I was there to represent Thinkspace as we submitted a project under the Large Buildings category.
Spoiler Alert - we didn’t win, but that’s okay.
Our project was a really interesting project at the University of Fraser Valley that taught us a valuable lesson about embodied carbon.
The building is an expansion of their existing dining hall to expand the seating capacity.
The addition area contained an existing concrete roof and floor slab that we were able to retain and reuse as the primary building structure.
This is a great way to lower the embodied carbon of your projects because the only new structure we required was the roof and minimal foundations which were primarily Mass Timber!
In the end, the building still ended up with an embodied carbon around 470kg/m2 which isn’t exactly low, although it’s not high either.
Surprisingly the reason wasn’t because of the structure, it was because of the architectural components. Here is the breakdown:
This meant that about 60% of the emissions were from the architectural components, which is a rare sight.
The exterior cladding was primarily aluminum curtainwall (high embodied carbon) and zinc clad opaque walls (also very high embodied carbon)
Lesson learned - even if your structural system is Mass Timber, and your reuse the existing concrete structure, the envelope can still drive up your overall emissions.
That brings me to my second topic of the week.
A big THANK YOU.
At the event, as expected, there were many carbon pioneers.
It was inspiring to be in a room of those type of people.
BUT it made me think about what I am doing with The Carbon Architect.
The only reason I can do what I do is because of YOU.
So from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU for reading.
It means a lot - and helps me spread this message to more architects.
If you like it, I’d encourage you to share it with 1 new person.
THE PERSON
Chris Nitz is a passionate Green Building Engineer and content creator. He has been posting on LinkedIn for years and is pushing the industry forward in has work at E3 Eco Group. He consistently shares success stories and important news topics about the world of sustainable design.
THE PROJECT
The UFV Dining hall is a beautiful Mass Timber building in Abbotsford BC. Full disclosure - we designed it at Thinkspace so I am a little biased. Rather then demolishing the existing portion of the building, the concrete slab on Level 1 and Level 2 was retained, making this a great embodied carbon story.