Sustainability & Performance
What is Embodied Carbon?
Embodied carbon is the greenhouse gas emitted producing, transporting, and installing building materials — the carbon 'baked in' before the building operates a single day. As operational energy gets cleaner, embodied carbon becomes the dominant share of a building's lifetime footprint.
In practice
Teams measure it by attaching emission factors (from EPDs) to quantities, then reduce it through material choices — lower-carbon concrete mixes, mass timber, reuse. Estimating tools increasingly report carbon next to cost from the same takeoff.
Tools for Embodied Carbon
Sterling
SaaS preconstruction platform unifying 2D/3D takeoff, resource-based cost estimating and embodied carbon in a single workflow.
Concrete AI
Machine learning optimizes concrete mix designs to cut cost and embodied carbon while meeting performance specs.
One Click LCA
Fast embodied carbon and LCA for buildings — integrates with Revit and more
2050 Materials
2050 Materials is a digital platform for the AEC industry to explore, compare and source sustainable building materials, with an API for integrating real-time climate impact data.
Cove.tool
Web-based software for analyzing, drawing, load modeling, and connecting data for building design and construction.
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