Hey, it's Ross from reversing climate change.
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reversing climate change podcast.
Cast by Nori. The world's first carbon removal
Marketplace, here are your hosts Ross, Kenyon and Christoph
jospeh say hello and welcome to the reversing climate change
podcast. I am Ross Kenyan here with
Christa Chase pay again. No, producer, Paul, where are
you? We need you, I'm doing this
alone. I need your help.
Please come back. It's nice to have a someone to
watch the levels while you're doing it.
So you're not having to chat at the same time but I'm growing
into this role. I think I'm doing, okay.
I think you are awesome, Ross is on the levels, Ross and I were
feeling a little nostalgic today because we're actually recording
this podcast in the library at University of Washington, and of
the many hats that Ross. Where's that Nori?
One of them is librarian. That just means that when I
moved up to Seattle, I brought my books in the ones that even
tenuously fit. What Nori is about.
I just stuffed into our library cabinets.
Yeah. But you also loaned them out and
give me foul looks, if I return them a little bit sullied,
that's true. Alden has a book about carbon
markets and I keep keep nagging her right.
So you do a good job at that. That's it for the bicker banter.
I'd like to moving on, I would like to introduce, I guess it's
really exciting today to have an expert in the field.
Someone who knows what she's talking about.
Who can perhaps, teach us a little bit around carbon
accounting, because that's what we're trying to build a business
around it. It just so turns out and we get
particularly excited. When thinking about
opportunities, Unity is that have historically emitted carbon
that can potentially play a role in storing that same carbon.
And so this episode, we'll get into a lot of the ideas around
the built environment life, cycle assessments and various
things that really can move the needle in addressing the total
amount of carbon going into the atmosphere.
So without any further Ado sitting to my left is Professor
Kate Simon and she is the Department of architecture at
the University of Washington and she also So has been a Founder
starter of the carbon leadership forum and I'm sure we'll learn
more what that is all about. But Kate, welcome to the show.
It's really great to have you on here.
We like to start the show with understanding the origins of how
people got to where they are today, which is sitting on the
reversing climate change podcast.
So how did it all get started? Oh, well, that's an interesting
question. So I am trained as an architect
and structural engineer and I was The saying as such in the
San Francisco Bay area and I got together with a team looking to
try and build low carbon building.
So, zero carbon buildings. And in that process, we started
by thinking that that was Zero operating a mission.
So buildings that were super energy, efficient with solar
panels. And then we started to look at
how we were going to make those buildings and started to get
questions about the supply chain.
So how could you make a Sustainable Building?
What materials were you using? Were you using concrete?
Crete or steel or wood? And where does it come from?
And that led me to try and understand?
What is the impact of manufacturing?
The materials that we use to build buildings and transporting
them around the world. And that led me to life cycle
assessment, which is the accounting method to understand
those impacts. I joined the University of
Washington about nine years ago, as a faculty member, and started
my research to try and understand and communicate that
data more clearly and what I found.
Is there was a lot of interesting work to both
understand the data and also generate and make decisions from
that data. Yeah, we talked about this on a
recent episode with Jimmy Gia clean.
Tech entrepreneur up here in Seattle about drawing the system
boundaries of life cycle analyses.
Am I jumping the gun on my okay? To do this, you're not.
Okay, is it analyses are assessment just to call you out
there? Oh, life, cycle assessments?
Yeah, that's an LCA. Yes.
How do you draw the system boundaries we We ended up
talking about this essay called I pencil.
Should we sent your way? And there's this problem of.
It seems really simple to talk about how to build a pencil.
There's a factory in, there's a tree that goes into it, but
there's also the machines that cut down those trees.
And then what about the agriculture that went to feed
the people who cut down the tree?
And then the machine that made the food it's like every Act of
consumption is in some way participating in the entire
global economy. But if you treat an LCA like
this, are you even able to functionally talk about?
It does become. Possible.
How do you draw these system boundaries in a way that is
actually useful? That's a great question because
how the system boundary is defined will impact the results.
So, what do you include in your analysis and what do you exclude
and life cycle? Assessment is an evolving
method. So different analyses can have
different system boundaries and then, therefore, different
results. So, the pencil article is great
and I would encourage people to read it if they're looking for.
An interesting thought expander, you know, one of the things like
growing, the coffee to feed the workers versus making the
manufacturing equipment. So there are standardized
methods that exist. So commonly, for example, the
people are assumed to exist, no matter what.
So the assumption is that even if you weren't cutting down
trees, you would probably still have a cup of coffee.
And so that the cup of coffee and the people themselves tend
to be outside the system boundary.
This is like additionality Is that the term that you end up
using, or is there some other term that guy would have drunk a
coffee and done some other job that had nothing to do with the
pencil would have happened? If any would have happened,
anyway, contribute it to the building, right?
But it can get. There are more challenging
questions like should you include the impact of making the
cement Kiln and divide it out over the many different years.
That the cement is made, so that one arguably should because it's
the impact of making Cement. You have to make a cement Kiln
but sometimes when one is conducting an LCA, there are
different reasons why you might conduct an LCA.
So if the goal is to understand the global impact of cement
production, one would need to include the impact of making the
cement Kilns, but if the goal of doing the LCA was to compare two
different cement manufacturing processes who have almost the
same facility types or perhaps it's difficult to get that data.
One might not include That. So the system boundary or wood
products is challenging in terms of how far back into the forest.
Do you include, you know, did the forest exist?
Are the forest is same as that cup of coffee or are the forests
related to the Forest Products and how do you include that?
We've thought a little bit about using Force products as
instances of carbon removal? If you're able to sustainably
harvest wood and build wooden buildings out of it, that could
store carbon assuming that That force is replacing carbon that
you took out of the forest but it does seem to get a little
tricky in there. I think we've been able to fully
wrap our heads around probably system, boundary issues.
You think that's fair to say. Yeah, I think we can be a little
bit hand wavy at this moment in time because we don't have a
live methodology for such a thing, but it brings to mind
something that I want to attribute to Klaus lackner who I
worked for for a number of years, who talked about
mobilizing carbon To help and perhaps simplify some of the
carbon accounting and in lcas. So he essentially says, if you
mobilize a ton of carbon, you need to put another ton of
carbon away because CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere
and mobilizing carbon can come from, cutting down forests, it
can come from burning, fossil fuels soil, erosion, whole bunch
of natural processes but the point is, it's that Balancing
Act and LCA is become a useful tool.
It seems to help the carbon Accounting in These various
stages to say when you mobilize the carbon, can you reduce that
at some form of the process? Once you've now mobilize the
carbon and got that building? Are you able to track emissions
that say I have this Rosy? I'd view of there's a world that
actually wants to pay to put carbon away.
I don't think we're there yet. We're trying to get there.
But anyway, so that helps you kind of track these things that
want to reduce the carbon and then you obviously have all of
these different systems boundaries.
So I guess I'm kind of just garbling some words to
potentially compose a question. Around the stages that things
move through to build things. And I think let's talk about
buildings because you're the architect and and are able to
talk about that. We ultimately want to get to
that balancing act, right? And so, can you talk us through
a little bit of the stages and how lcas become applicable in
this context? So I'm going to start just with
a building sure as opposed to buildings or even a room if you
want to build. I'll just go with a building
which is easier to start with. So So, there are the impact of a
building, go all the way back. Start with material extraction,
which is often called The Cradle.
So, extracting materials from Earth and the emissions related
to extracting those materials and then manufacturing them.
So there's electricity that's used and there's often chemical
reactions that take place in the in the formation of new
materials and then there's transportation and construction
so that phase is often called the embodied.
Facts are the impacts embodied in the materials of the
building. And then, there's the stages of
using a building that includes operating the building.
So, using electricity and water and heat, but they're also
during the use phase, there's also the impacts of repairing
materials and maintaining those materials and then there would
be the end of life stage. So did you demolish the
building? What do you do with the
materials at end of life? What happens to them?
Do they rot or do you reuse them?
And then, Then there is things that happen outside of the
system boundary like are you of able to avoid manufacturing more
steel because you recycle a lot of steel or how much carbon was
sequestered in the growth of wood materials.
So there are formalized lifecycle stages that are used
to characterize where those impacts are.
Interestingly, if you change from a building to buildings
which gets to cities and infrastructure, there is a
constant flow of things that are built in.
Hushed and there's the electrical grid and so I'm
pointing out that it starts to get more complicated.
However, it's not necessarily essential to define the full
complex system to take action to improve the system.
So our work at the carbon leadership forum is emphasizing
increasing awareness of Architects owners and builders
that the choices they make in materials matter.
And identifying strategies, both from a computational
perspective, the calculating the carbon but also making good
choices. So, simply speaking, you're
better off reusing a building than tearing it down and
building a new one that sounds sort of obvious or what if it's
a really clean building or like a really, really a progressive.
Excellent good Steward of its resources, building leaving tear
down a bad building and build a super clean dressing.
In some cases, it would be much better to just keep the old
building Yes. Yes.
Okay, if we think about a lot of the impacts are in Foundation
Systems and the primary structure of the system.
So, if you can keep the existing structure and upgrade the
insulation or the mechanical systems, you can improve the
operations. That's what retrofitting is yes.
So retrofitting good, and when you're building use the
materials really efficiently so don't be completely driven by
form. So there's some choices that you
can make about. How you build your building that
uses less material and then pick lower lower carbon, or carbon
sequestering materials. I find that.
I mean, first of all, love the concept of let's do things that
don't emit more carbon. And if that's reusing a building
or repurposing, it great fully on board as a New Yorker.
We used to live in a city where there are some rather tall
skyscrapers going up and I think Architects and maybe you'll
present this will resonate with you some Architects.
I'm sure you can think of at least one.
I have quite large egos. They want to build the tallest
building and they're doing it actually because that's what
people want. And so there's this kind of
dirty secret is that when you build really tall buildings,
that's going to release a lot of carbon and the energy that the
building consumes and the various things that go into that
input. So there's this pressure, I
think where you say for matters but think about the carbon.
I just curious your perspective on when form is really driven by
Egos and I want to live on the 120th floor and these, you know,
And all the guys I mean in the next decade in New York City
we're going to see a number of really tall buildings which from
a life cycle. I think look pretty poor.
And so I'm curious to understand some of your insight into the
forces that are both retrofitting old buildings and
what you're up against in some of the new gaudy buildings that
aren't all that good. Oh, you're trying to get
political on me now. You little bit?
Yeah. I want to if I want to get
question. Yes, spicy spicy, dramatic
question. Well I'm going to pull a good
academic and just be kind of Neutral in my response because
it all depends. So surely, it's not the best use
of our resources for individual people to have multiple large
homes that sit on used. So, if you're going to talk
about what would be our best action, it would not be billed.
Extra homes for super wealthy people.
While rest of other people are not in homes, there are studies
that compare relative height and the carbon impacts of making
them and then the carbon impacts of operating them and People
come to position statements of the ideal density of
neighborhoods related to reducing Transportation because
it's also not so great to spread everybody out.
Really large distances. So there's a, there's a
trade-off there. I think probably the more
pressing question is the developing world and the amount
of construction that's going to be happening in China India and
Asia, broadly, over the next 30 years.
And that construction is important from an equity
perspective. Yet the consumption of material
resources is significant. I'm trying to remember my direct
quote, so it's something like we're going to be building the
equivalent of a Manhattan every 35 days.
I'll do I'll say it, if you didn't, because Andrew Himes
drop that same nugget on his episode of the pot.
So we might not have the exact date.
It might be 32 and it might be 37, but you'll take it up with
Andrew. You guys can do.
Yeah, I went out for the next 30 Years, 30 years and those
buildings need to be material efficient, but they are also a
An opportunity to be carbon sinks if we can figure out how
to grow aggregate cost effectively from smokestacks,
then we could be sticking carbon into the concrete foundations,
like the aggregate that goes into the making of concrete.
Oh yeah, Aggregates just rock. Sorry, that's the technical term
for rock or sand, or play extra extra dumb here today.
Yeah, no, no, it's good. Good one.
So we're actually short of good rocks and sand so it might seem
crazy but In place, you know, Hawaii is now importing sand and
the punch line is 0. And then, punch line is if we
can stick carbon in sand, just sound, like a great setup for a
joke. Oh, I know, I'm not actually
funny. You're just, you're seriously.
I don't actually have jokes. It's the, you could pull this up
beforehand. Okay, thank you.
Thank you. I'm embarrassed now.
No. Ok, so Hawaii is importing sand
because they can't make concrete with them.
Out of saying that they have their right?
They need sand and gravel of a certain quality.
You that you don't want to dredge all the beaches of Hawaii
to use. Yeah.
Where do you get it? Where is this hand coming from?
Well, I know where it's coming from here.
Their aggregate mines in Washington state and they're
also aggregate that comes from British Columbia and that's like
super high quality Canadian Rock super strong.
How does it start storing carbon?
Do they treat it in some new way or standard rock is not actively
storing carbon, but there are emerging technologies that,
okay? Now I'm outside my expertise,
they do something so they can capture the carbon that comes
out of the smokestack. So concentrated carbon and grow,
little bits of sand or direct air capture mechanisms as a
potential. So imagine what looks like a
giant. What I've seen looked like a
giant air conditioner. Some sort that was spitting
stuff out. You probably know more about
this than I do. Yeah, I think that's that's
Kristoff's background. He does a lot about that, that's
coming at some point here. And so, you're saying that
buildings Be able to concrete. I'm not sure how much
responsibility that industry has for climate change but I think
it's a double-digit percentage of man-made greenhouse gases.
Yes, yes, depends on which system boundary you draw and
really close to 10% from cement and concrete production and
cement in concrete are really useful materials.
So it's a interesting trade-off. High-impact in high utility.
Sure, we wouldn't want to give up concrete, but over time,
you're saying that buildings will be able to to, I don't know
if they'll be able to offset the entire amount of the emissions
from their concrete, or just make it go down a lot or could
even become truly carbon - that's our goal.
So, as a group, we used to be modest in our Ambitions and say
we just want to reduce embodied carbon.
But now we want the built environment to be a carbon sink
and it seems plausible just like going to the Moon to seemed
plausible like hard and needs a lot of work.
But plausible, yeah, we ground them.
Person climate change a podcast. So we're liable to run our
mouths about big goals as much as anyone.
So I hope that works were very excited about Aggregates in
concrete generally and we're kind of counting on you.
So yeah, keep it up. I want to go back to you
mentioned the carbon leadership forum and talking about actual
practical uses for lcas. So can you just give some
example? I mean, I love the goal, the
ambition long-term were totally aligned and on the same team.
We want buildings to be net. Carbon sinks.
But they're not there yet, but LCA still have usefulness and
so, can you for our listeners, kind of explain why someone
might want to use an LCA today and how how they're being used,
okay, in the building industry, there's really two scales of
lcas that are taking place. One is at a product.
So, a product specific LCA is conducted and can report the
results in an environmental product declaration and CPD epds
are sort of like nutrition labels in that that you can.
Any PD and have a sense of the carbon emissions for a specific
product. The US Green Building Council
and other Green Building programs gives credits so you
can get credits if you use products with epds and that
that's really about disclosure. So this is new as a practice
that a manufacturer would disclose the carbon and other
environmental impacts of their manufacturing, so it's not
across the industry. So at the first stage we're
really needing to get towards transparency and then then there
is the look towards Improvement and And so then one could
conduct what's called a whole building LCA.
But frankly, it's really a part of a whole building else.
The a usually, so typically, people are analyzing the big
hitters of the structural system, the beams, and the
columns, and the exterior walls, the windows and insulation, and
things like that. It's the steel is that the big,
big, harmful 10. Now, you're trying, another
political comment, yeah, what kind of put you somewhere?
We're going to dig yourself out what's bad about building do.
It's like the big what's bad about building buildings as we
use a lot of material and materials.
Tend to have high impact, especially the materials that
require a fair amount of energy to process.
That's like that's concrete. That's steel.
That's glass. That's insulation.
That's aluminum Plastics. I'm still not entirely clear
what insulation is but I've been made quite itchy and my
Grandma's Attic. Once you were that kid, yeah,
like it's gotten. Candy is so cool.
Yeah, no, that's not smart. It was was not enough.
Well, I'm very glad that you did not die from that experience, so
that we could record this podcast.
I also am glad because I want to play this game that we are going
to try out for the very first time.
It's called good LCA, bad LCA, so I'll say good LCA, and then,
Kate will finish my sentence. Yeah, and what I really
appreciate is that you didn't tell me this ahead of time, so
it's totally totally Sighs no prep.
Okay, here we go. A good LCA is one that defines
the system boundary about LCA is one that doesn't tell you
anything about their analysis method.
Just the result, a good LCA is one that uses consistent data
about LCA is One, that declares. It's better than everybody else
without being third-party reviewed.
Okay. Keep the politics out of this
gate. We gonna tone it down it down.
Okay, you've been warned more than once.
Okay. A bad LCA is one that declare
why you want to do it the goal. So I want to do an LCA because I
want to know what's the better solution but then you analyze
something, totally different. Like I just reviewed one that I
thought was bad. So somebody was comparing the
transportation distances for using different cement
alternates and concrete and they highlighted the differences in
ecotoxicity of transportation and ignored the differences in
carbon impact of the concrete mix.
So they picked what in the end is low, significant impact
differences and not prioritizing High significant impacts?
Yeah, that's a good. I'm not opposed to ecotoxicity.
It's just that the ecotoxicity Impacts of transporting fly.
Ash is not the biggest problem on the planet.
What is ecotoxicity and what exactly is that?
It's a measure of the toxic emissions within the
environment. I don't like that question on
that that's basically it's an environmental impact category.
That's not commonly used because there is not as broad of a
global consensus on the relevance of the reporting to
the actual change in environmental health.
Okay. I understand so people pretty
much agree with lcas that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.
We need to be watching for those but then there are other types
of chemicals that there's more disagreement about or their
importance of, so ozone, depletion super important.
However, there's been policy to reduce the ozone depleting
chemical emissions and so therefore making choices based
on how much ozone depleting emissions are taking place are
not very relevant because they're all super small right
now. Mmm.
Okay, understood this is a hard game Christoph.
Yeah should be ended or do you have it one more round in you?
Let's let's try it. This is our final round of okay.
A good LCA follows ISO standards and reports goal and scope and
information. I think I'm repeating myself but
because lcas can be different based on what you include and
how you analyze it. It can't be a good LCA unless
you tell people how you did it. Yeah, I think if there's one
take-home point you decide to store, really anyone who's
making any kind of like declaration in any kind of
estimation need to put your assumptions up front, so that
someone else can come along and replicate that same thing.
That's like the basic tenets of science.
It is yes, thank you. Yeah, so do that if you're doing
LCS, that sounds good. I want to get into the various
Scopes and various other things that were referenced.
Or do you really want me to do about else?
I think we're good. I think she's, I think she's got
it. Yeah, especially since I keep
repeating myself. Like if you are repeating
yourself. Also, if you're listening to
this podcast it's not as easy as it sounds to be be witty and on
it hunt for stuff and I constantly are putting her foot
in the mouth and we listened back to them later and say oops.
So. Yeah.
What could impact the the last comment a bit about the scope
and well, for example, one could compare two different buildings
and if you just said this building is the lowest impact
building And you didn't say what was included, sometimes studies,
for example, ignore the entire Foundation system.
Because they don't have data on it.
So if you don't have the foundation system, there's
limits to what kind of conclusions you could draw.
So it looks cleaner than it might otherwise because you just
don't include everything. So this seems like a real
challenge. That's facing the construction
industry. And part of your work has been
to develop tools to help them face these challenges around
standardization and creating estimations.
That take a whole look at the building, which is with the e.
EC3, which is the embodied carbon construction construction
calculator, the EC3 calculator, decody, call it Callie and I
kind of like ISO standards where ISO is international standards
organization, but you just say standards again because it's one
of those things that we call it the EC3 tools.
Okay. I don't quite sound.
So silly, got it, got it. Okay, and we love the EC3 tool
that obviously has been a broad stakeholder development, where
you have people and and to do Which are working in the
construction industry have architects who can come
together. I love that.
It seems to State its assumptions up front so you
actually know how those calculations are made.
But can you talk a little bit about how the EC3 tool,
addresses, some of these challenges in not full lifecycle
accounting? Yeah, so first off the EC3 tool
uses LCA data. So it uses those environmental
product declarations that report materials and is designed to
help design construction. And owner teams differentiate
between materials up the supply chain.
It is not a tool at the present state that could conduct a whole
building lifecycle assessment. So it's being really explicit
that it's a brown product procurement.
So I know I want to buy steel or I want to buy reinforcing steel,
what are my choices and how could I make those choices?
So we're in the phase, one of that project.
So we've got some Structural Engineers piloting it, and we're
just about to start with some general contractors piloting,
it, the main objective of this Project is to try to make the
complexity that we're talking about simpler for design and
construction teams to act upon. So we're working with sea-change
Labs, who's doing the technological development, all
of the work of both user interface and data management.
That's super exciting. Because that's not my area of
expertise, and our job, at the University of Washington is both
to facilitate the dialogue, across different industry
groups, and then helped establish what that transparent
data analysis. This is, yeah, I imagine if you
were in the construction industry and even if it was a
big priority of yours to build buildings, in the most
ecological fashion possible, the amount of information that's
necessary once the scope is Broad enough is really quite
challenging. I think.
Even if you had the right intentions, your job might be
stymied just by a lack of centralized information and it's
the world economy generally. Yeah I mean and in some ways the
first step of what we're doing is quite simple and that we're
collecting what data. Enabling it to be sorted and
evaluating the data to assess whether or not it's comparable,
and as an intermediate step. So, I mean, that that really is
right now, if I'm an architect and engineer and owner, I
wouldn't even know what are the possible ranges.
So, you know, what is the low-carbon concrete that one can
get in Seattle for Architects on?
Go back to Kristoff's comment about the desire to build bigger
and bigger buildings, and I don't know, too many Architects.
I'm just if your ego is bruised, by us saying, your ego is Big.
Very sorry. You can write to us, will issue
a formal apology to the international Society of
Architects for whatever Professional Standards body
thing is? Yeah, is there a tendency or a
race? I would imagine if I Was An
Architect, these days, I would be trying to build the cleanest
most environmental building possible.
I'm sure. You know, just the size of the
building is no longer the main metric that people are rushing
for. They also wanted to be Peter and
being environmentally sound. Is that a trend?
That's happening. So, I have two different
responses that I want to give to you.
So first, I'll talk about the trend within the architecture
and engineering professions. So there is a noticeable trend
of understanding, the interconnected complexities of
the environmental impact of building from operating and
building them. The Pacific Northwest is sort of
known as a hub of embodied carbon, but I would extend that
all the way to the West. So the West Ghost.
There is a lot of understanding and interest around that.
I'm going to go back a little bit to the ego because it is not
just the ego of the architect. And in fact, the architect in
many cases in almost all cases is hired by somebody else.
And so the choice of an egotistical architect is usually
linked to the choice of an egotistical client.
The clients are the ones that make the primary Direction and
decision-making like a giant real estate magnate naming no
names. I don't know.
He won after no no no we and but you know and companies have
desires to make buildings that are notable and stunning that
might not be just about ego per se.
So one of the interesting issues is to figure out what are the
no-cost options. The best practices that one can
Implement within any type of building from a low-income
housing to a high-rise Towers. So that you know, there are some
fundamental Apple's about getting 20 operating energy.
All of our buildings, should be there by 2030.
All of our new buildings, and we need to figure out Pathways.
So, all of our buildings can get to zero, carbon by 2050, if I
wanted to show off to my neighbors and I had enough money
to buy a house and got enough money to build a house.
I think if I wanted to show off the best way to do, it would be
make one of these houses. That is, is living.
It has a green roof on it. It's maximizes.
Take advantage of the sun has to have house passive. - yes.
Is that the best way to show off if you're rich and you want to
show that you care. So, if I'm talking to the rich
people showing they want to care that are in your audience.
Is that sort of what I'm hearing?
You say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Give me some advice. Yeah.
And let me in the future. When I want to do this.
Well, you know, yes, you should be making plans to do that.
So you probably in the future we'll be doing that.
So you or any person who owns large amounts of real estate, it
might be difficult to radically change what you're doing today
but you should be having a strategy Gigi and plan of how
that's going to be implemented over time.
But keep in mind, listeners, that you need to make sure that
you could, you just stay in the house that you're in.
Now, it might be worse to build that passive house in my
learning, it might actually be if I might actually be better.
So it's, you know, if you're going to tear down the house at
one location, you're probably better off retrofitting.
It and adding solar panels at some point though is there
enough and maybe appreciating your 1995 kitchen, Or putting
carbon storing counters in which don't exist.
Quite yet, know that I'd like marble and granite.
No one has figured out some other material for that.
Yeah, I give something more important to say than
countertops. Probably know.
I like the guests to sort of prime the questions they want to
be asked, and I think you're going there a little bit Kate.
When you say carbon sequestering materials in buildings or the
built environment, so, talk to us a little bit.
About that. What are some of the challenges
and opportunities for storing carbon in the built environment?
And maybe just we can start with the countertop but I'm sure
there's more yes. Okay.
So the opportunity is huge, there's a large mass of
materials that are used in buildings.
So if you think of carbon just as a chemical that has mass that
we need to stick in things if we can figure out how to make
useful materials from that carbon, there's a lot of
opportunity, you know, not just the structural system but the
table that We've got here Furniture, the Furnishings all
along. So there are manufacturers that
are setting targets to having carbon neutral products.
Interface carpet is one that they've got a plans of figuring
out how they can sequester materials reuse, materials
reduce the carbon intensity of their energy sources.
So there are conventional materials like carpet and then
there are new materials that might be a new use of carbon
fiber, right? That once we figured out how to
do that in a cost-effective way, we might be having carbon Our
tables with buildings that are bigger than single-family homes.
I've seen there's some pretty big buildings in Seattle that
use wood as their structure. Yes, they're beautiful.
Something, the the beams are exposed and they're, they're
really lovely more so than if it was just an exposed steel beam.
If you're in some cool Warehouse e kind of space, like many of
the co-working spaces that I've been in, has have those kind of
things? Why is that coming back?
Why is would as a structural support?
Now either allowed was a disallowed did steal just steal
the show for a while. And now, what is back what's
happening? That could be a whole podcast in
itself is it is just opposite juicy topic.
We should just a cross laminated Timber podcast.
So some of it has to do with new manufacturing, techniques making
large pieces of wood out of smaller pieces.
Some of that is a renewed interest in the material.
So enthused people who feel that, it's beautiful and want to
build with it. There have been recent changes
to the building code which allow people to build taller buildings
out of wood. There was a lot of debate about
that. Can catch fire easier than steel
and concrete, although steel and concrete also have issues with
fire. So you have to fireproof steel
and and concrete also. So it is in some ways.
It's a trend that construction Crews have expertise in
different methods. So if you look at some of the
old buildings in Seattle, they're all built out of heavy
Timber, big large pieces of wood, partly because that was
what was available. We had big trees and lots of
people who knew how to build out of wood and at that point in
time, you had to ship Up the steel and the concrete in from
Chicago or the East Coast. So at that time we had a
Workforce that and material resources.
That was all wood. There's a lot of potential for
sustainably managed forests to use wood as a carbon storing
material. But you also have to use wood
efficiently in order for it to be the best use of the material.
So carbon is stored in wood but carbon is also emitted in
manufacturing wood. And so using more wood in
Building is not the best solution, even though, more
carbon would be stored in that building because you're better
off using that more wood and building more buildings.
I'm sorry. I'm so you have a meal ticket
forever because it sounds like this L.
See a game is quite difficult. There's a lot of nuance involves
sounds like this EC3 tool has future uses to help identify
that exact quandary. Yes.
And then really, and then interestingly going up then all
into the supply chain of forests and then you start to get to
some of I think what would probably be the The issues that
you would be talking about is, how does Forest management play
out in a benefit as a carbon benefit or not and how do Forest
Products be able to recognize that Forest management benefit?
One of the really interesting challenges is that products like
a two-by-four tend to be graded, just on its strength, not on the
carbon benefit of the whole supply chain.
Yeah, speaking of forest management.
I know this podcast will air sometime in the winter, which is
not Fire season. Weird to say that.
We now have fire season, but that's a bang.
But one of my favorite ideas I heard about Forest management
was actually the harvesting of wood that is at risk of burning
or maybe already dead. And basically converting that
into biochar and turning that biochar into a solid material
that could be carbon that somehow ends up in the built
environment. Any reactions to that idea?
I haven't heard that one, but that's interesting.
Somebody also just recently pointed out that the forest
Fires, end up, making that biochar and then the wood hangs
out in the forest for a while. The state of Washington owns a
lot of and manages a lot of the forests and if the state can
figure out ways to help manage the forests well and get
building Wood Products out of it, that would be a good win-win
right? Can we reduce fires, help our
air quality manage force and buildings for carbon.
That would be great. So good potential and heard that
one, that sounds pretty You're saying though we should start
wrapping it up. Is there anything else we should
cover? We certainly have covered a lot
of ground. I guess to put a question your
way K. If someone wants to get more
involved in the LCA space or start thinking about carbon and
buildings where should they begin?
Probably the best place would be to join the embodied carbon
Network. So the embodied carbon network
is supported by the carbon leadership Forum but it's an
open access. Access communication Community.
Now we've got about 300 people from around the world.
These would be the embodied carbon nerds, I'll call them us.
I'll call us all nerds and body carbon aficionados and it's a
place where people are sharing news and asking questions.
So it would also we also create our own series of webinars
around embodied carbon in the built environment.
It's a place where people are. If you ask a question within 24
hours, you get a bunch of people answering giving you different
answers. The question that would be the
first place I would go, and then The carbon leadership Forum does
have some resources online and there's some other other
organizations architecture 2030 has a carbon smart material
palette. Cool.
Yeah, I think you may have just forced our hand and Nori is
going to join that Network. That sounds like an amazing
Community. Yeah.
And so hopefully maybe some of our listeners will want to join
and we'll see you in there as well.
Yes, thanks for being with us, Kate.
And then we recently sent out via the Nori newsletter podcast
survey. And we heard that People very
much wanted, an outro, sometimes we end abruptly, so, I'm going
to keep talking and then gradually Fade Out.