GHG Emissions  -  September 14, 2021

Carbon Action Network Builds Coalition Around Carbon Footprint of Buildings

A group of businesses that includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Salesforce and San Francisco International Airport was brought together in an initiative meant to address the impact of embodied carbon emissions within the building sector.

Building Transparency announced Sept. 8 two groups, titled ownersCAN and materialsCAN (Carbon Action Network), which will work together on the reduction of emissions from building materials.

The ownersCAN group includes owners, developers, users and managers of buildings focused on improving embodied carbon awareness within the industry, promoting the use of tools to account for and reduce these emissions and using their influence to advocate for industry action on embodied carbon. The members of ownersCAN created an Embodied Carbon Action Plan (ECAP) outlining the steps all stakeholders can take to reduce emissions throughout a building’s life cycle. 

The ownCAN members include:

• Daniels
• Facebook
• GSA
• Hudson Pacific Properties
• Kilroy
• LinkedIn
• Microsoft
• NTT Global Sourcing
• Salesforce
• San Francisco International Airport
• Shopify
• Skanska Commercial Development

Meanwhile, the materialsCAN group will focus on those who own, lease, design or construct spaces and the actions they can take to better understand the carbon footprint of their projects. The groups will also focus on highlighting case studies on low-carbon buildings and promoting tools that increase knowledge of embodied carbon from various building materials. 

The materialsCAN group includes:

• Armstrong
• ASSA ABLOY
• Gensler
• Interface
• Kingspan
• Saint-Gobain
• Skanska USA Building
• Superior Essex
• TK Elevator
• USG

“At Building Transparency, we strive to raise awareness of embodied carbon’s role in addressing climate change and encourage leaders to set embodied carbon performance targets for their buildings and make carbon-smart procurement decisions,” Stacy Smedley, chair and executive director of Building Transparency, said in a statement. “ownersCAN and materialsCAN are crucial to educating the building industry and supporting them through the use of our free, open-access tools to benchmark, assess and reduce embodied carbon in supply chain emissions of construction materials.”