The SE 2050 Commitment Program Has Launched!

During this year’s Greenbuild International Conference that occurred from November 10-12, 2020, the Structural Engineers (SE) 2050 Commitment Program, backed by the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI), officially launched to the public. The commitment program was developed in response to the initiative put forth by the members of the University of Washington’s Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF). The CLF’s challenge to structural engineers and their firms was to establish embodied carbon benchmarks and reduction goals to achieve net-zero embodied carbon in buildings by the year 2050. Therefore, the SE 2050 Commitment’s goal is to provide structural engineers with the necessary tools and resources to contribute and track projects towards the vision of net-zero embodied carbon buildings by 2050.

The program is broken down into three key strategies: Plan, Implement, and Share. After a firm formally signs onto the commitment, they will need to create an Embodied Carbon Action Plan (ECAP). The firm’s ECAP will center around four main topics: an embodied carbon education plan, a reporting plan, reduction strategies, and advocacy. Firms will then implement their ECAP with the support of educational resources and tools accessible through se2050.org.

Lastly, firms will input projects’ embodied carbon measurements into the SE 2050 database. After adequate embodied carbon data has been collected for different regions and building types, embodied carbon benchmarks and reduction targets will be developed.

 

To learn more about the SE 2050 Commitment program and see the available embodied carbon resources available to structural engineers, visit https://se2050.org/!

Achieving Net-Zero Embodied Carbon in Structural Materials

Published research from local institutes to international panels are stating the importance of reducing carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050. Currently, building construction accounts for over 10% of CO₂ emissions, with many of those emissions contributed from structural materials like steel, concrete, and timber. Additionally, according to the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction’s 2019 Global Status Report, the global building stock is set to double by 2050. Therefore quite the challenge is presented to structural engineers to achieve net-zero carbon buildings to meet societal needs by 2050. To address this challenge, the Structural Engineering Institute’s Sustainability Committee has recently published a white paper titled: “Achieving Net Zero Embodied Carbon in Structural Material by 2050.”

The white paper examines in detail four transition tracks that make achieving net-zero embodied carbon in the built environment possible. The four transition tracks are:

1) Design Improvements

2) Greening the Electrical Grid

3) Material Production Improvements

4) Carbon Offsets

These four tracks may be combined in various proportions to reach net-zero, as shown in the table below.

The Carbon Working Group encourages structural engineers, architects, contractors, and others who wonder how the construction industry can meet critical carbon emission reduction targets to read this paper. It is available for free download at the SEI Sustainability Committee’s website: https://seisustainability.org/.