Carbon Group Post 8: Contribution of Buildings to Climate Change

If you’ve been following these blog posts, you know that structural materials have inherent, or embodied, environmental impacts. The magnitude and range of environmental impacts differ among structural materials, and many of those differences have been discussed in previous blog posts related to the SEI Sustainability Committee’s technical report, Structural Materials and Global Climate. The contribution...

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Carbon Group Post 7: Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP)

Fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs) are often used for retrofit and specialized applications even though they are not common for primary structural systems. For those unfamiliar with FRPs, carbon fiber and glass fiber sporting equipment such as surfboards, bicycles, and golf clubs may provide the best example of the material. FRPs are applied by impregnating a fiber such as carbon or glass with a polymer...

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Carbon Group Post 6: Concrete Masonry Units (CMU)

The Carbon Working Group continues our series of blog posts on topics from SEI Sustainability Committee’s newly-released technical report, Building Structure and Global Climate. As we write this post about the carbon footprint of masonry materials, we see more Environmental Product Declarations use in construction.  Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs, are documents that quantify a product's embodied carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, and are used to achieve LEEDv4...

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