Embodied Carbon Strategies and Metrics

Presented on March 15, 2023 by Richard Graves, Director of the Center for Sustainable Building Research and an Associate Professor in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota
Abstract: As the new buildings and major renovations we design become more and more efficient for energy and carbon emissions, the importance of the energy and carbon emissions associated with the materials (embodied carbon) to create buildings increases. The Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (B3) have a long history of including embodied carbon in the guidelines for state funded construction. Currently the Center for Sustainable Building Research is studying potential new processes and requirements to reduce the embodied carbon of state construction in Minnesota.
Biography: Richard Graves is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Building Research and an Associate Professor in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. From 2012 to 2014, he was the Executive Director of the International Living Future Institute, leading the operations and strategic efforts around all of the Institute's signature programs. His research focuses on regenerative design as a fundamentally new approach that must be required of architecture across scales (from the building to the neighborhood to the city) to achieve sustainable and resilient urban development in a dynamic world.