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/!
