CarbonPositive: Carbon Intelligence for Reuse Decisions
Renovation work is on the rise.
This growth represents an evolution in how we value our existing built fabric, knowing that emissions avoided today are worth more than reductions promised in the future. While attention often centers on carbon-smart strategies for new construction, we will not build our way to an emission-free built environment; we must reuse existing building stock effectively. Renovating a structure usually has a much lower upfront carbon footprint than building new, because renovations typically reuse the emissions-intensive parts of the building—the foundation, structure, and envelope. Retrofitting an existing building can dramatically reduce its operating emissions.
Despite this intuitive knowledge, the building industry has lacked the ability to easily compare the variables of embodied and operating emissions over specific time frames for reuse and new-construction scenarios.
The Carbon Avoided Retrofit Estimator Tool is an online tool to help address this gap. The idea for the tool originated when Larry Strain, FAIA, founder of Siegel & Strain Architects, was asked by a building portfolio owner for a resource that could identify the carbon emissions avoided by choosing to reinvest in buildings rather than replace them.
Architect Erin McDade and Lori Ferriss December 16, 2022
