Project Background
Starting in 2019, Salesforce, a cloud-based software company, wanted to better understand the total embodied carbon impacts of their growing real estate portfolio, inclusive of these often-missed emissions. At the direction of their Real Estate and Sustainability teams, Brightworks Sustainability and WAP Sustainability began developing a methodology to determine uncertainty and define a process for using proxy embodied carbon estimates in our work. In other words, to determine embodied carbon factors for a wide range of products; those with Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) and those without. The outcome of this work resulted in some important findings, namely the publication of the World Resource Institute (WRI) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Sector Supplement, formally approved in November 2021 by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. (Read full case study at Brightworks.)
(posted 12/5/24)
About the Author
Jeffery Frost, Materials Technical Lead, Brightworks Sustainability. Jeff Frost is one of a very small number of global experts in human health and environmental issues in materials. For two decades, he has worked to reduce barriers to the specification of sustainable materials. He was the creator of Brightworks’ scoring method for translating material health and environmental attributes into numerical values to guide sustainable procurement choices for clients, in turn driving market transformation and rewarding innovation.
