Establish WBLCA baselines

READY…FIRE…AIM

Designers who produce WBLCAs on their projects always ask themselves “Are my results good? Are my results consistent with a 1.5C or 2C goal?” Understanding current baselines and future benchmarks or targets is key to answering these questions.

Due to the complex nature of embodied carbon and Life Cycle Assessments, the establishment of WBLCA baselines by building type is a difficult task, and one that is currently being worked on by many international organizations. The Carbon Leadership Forum [external source] is one leader who is currently working on this with two important projects: 1) CLF WBLCA Benchmark Study v2 [external source] ; 2) Advancing the LCA Ecosystem [external source]. These projects when complete will give us the data to set embodied carbon baselines and benchmarks that we can aim for, changing our process to READY…AIM…FIRE.

CECC is working on its own Baselines and benchmarks, with a focus on 7 building systems that comprise the Whole Building. This approach can engage all team members by defining the baselines for their building system and allowing individual targets to be set. The sum of the building system targets will then be summed to create the WBLCA target. CECC is working to ensure that our results are consistent with those being developed by leading international organizations.