embodied carbon

USGBC-CA Editor’s Note:  Welcome to 2026 and to our blog! We are eager to hear your insights and thought leadership that will inspire our collective audience, our community. And please read and engage with our authors! So let’s kick it off with this contribution from BREEAM, and email julie@usgbc-ca.org if you have a proposed post! The real […]

Link to Facilities Dive (Jan. 6, 2026) | In 2025, facilities managers faced challenges including tariff uncertainty, increased security risks, changing workplace dynamics and rising operating and energy costs. So what’s next? Facilities Dive invited readers and other industry experts to share their predictions on how facilities management and their roles could change in the […]

Link to Engineering News-Record (Sept. 24, 2025) | States and municipalities continue to pass laws and introduce green energy and climate-related initiatives, often indirectly through building performance standards and electrification mandates. …Successful implementation hinges on well-thought-out laws, collaboration and support networks. A building performance hub hosted by the U.S. Green Building Council California began in 2024 with participants […]

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 […]

If concrete were a country, it would be the third highest in climate emissions globally — that’s how pervasive concrete is as a source of carbon emissions. Large amounts of carbon are emitted in the breaking up of limestone to make cement (a process known as calcination) and the heating up of cement kilns to […]