A building's embodied carbon profile is defined before it is open for business—and it lasts a lifetime. It comes from the manufacturing and delivery of materials used to build the building—its concrete, steel, glass, aluminum, insulation, interior finishes—and the emissions required to install them during construction. In theory, embodied carbon is the easiest environmental impact to control, but doing so requires analysis and strategic decision-making during design.
Even though a building does not “produce” the carbon counted in its embodied carbon profile, international greenhouse gas accounting frameworks attribute the emissions associated with producing and delivering building materials to the project because the project creates demand for those materials.
That is why designers and developers are increasingly evaluating embodied carbon as part of a building's life-cycle emissions profile. It is also becoming an important consideration in Scope 3 emissions reporting and corporate decarbonization strategies. Embodied carbon can account for around half of a new building’s total life cycle emissions. Globally, building materials and construction generate about 11% of energy-related carbon emissions. Plus, as buildings become more efficient to operate and the energy grid moves toward renewables, the materials chosen before construction will carry even more weight. For many new buildings, that means a growing share of lifetime emissions is determined before the building is ever occupied.
This is one of the key differences between embodied carbon and operational carbon. Operational carbon comes from the energy required to run a building over time and can often be reduced through efficiency upgrades, electrification, and renewable energy. Embodied carbon, by contrast, is largely locked in once materials are selected and construction begins.
That is why embodied carbon must be addressed early in project planning and design. Embodied carbon impacts a company’s Scope 3 reporting, incentive eligibility, tenant expectations, procurement strategy, and long-term asset value. The earlier teams account for embodied carbon, the more control they have over the long-term emissions profile, project costs, compliance, risk, and performance. As building decarbonization becomes a larger priority for owners, investors, tenants, and customers, embodied carbon is increasingly influencing decisions that extend well beyond sustainability reporting.
For owners and business leaders, embodied carbon is increasingly influencing decisions that extend beyond sustainability reporting. Investors, tenants, customers, and supply-chain partners are placing greater emphasis on measurable decarbonization outcomes, creating new expectations around how buildings are designed, constructed, and documented.
Many organizations are facing growing pressure to demonstrate progress toward sustainability goals. For commercial real estate owners, lower-carbon buildings can help support tenant ESG commitments, procurement requirements, and long-term market competitiveness. Projects that fail to address embodied carbon may find themselves at a disadvantage as reporting requirements and customer expectations continue to evolve.
Regulations are also placing greater emphasis on product-level carbon documentation. California’s Buy Clean California Act sets Global Warming Potential limits for key materials, including steel, rebar, and concrete. For project teams, that means material choices and documentation can affect whether products are accepted, whether substitutions create problems, and whether low-carbon goals survive buyout.
Certification programs are moving in the same direction. LEED v5 places greater emphasis on embodied carbon assessment and lower-carbon material selection, making carbon data part of the project strategy rather than a closeout exercise.
Financial incentives are also increasingly tied to project sustainability performance. Whether pursuing certifications, green financing opportunities, public-sector work, or corporate sustainability commitments, owners are finding that carbon outcomes can influence project economics as well as environmental performance.
The business risk is practical: missed incentives, certification gaps, procurement challenges, and project decisions that do not support long-term sustainability goals. That risk starts early because the biggest carbon decisions are often made before construction begins.
The biggest embodied carbon decisions often happen before construction starts. Structural systems, envelope choices, and major materials set the baseline for the project. Concrete, steel, wood, sourcing, insulation, glazing, aluminum framing, and MEP equipment are just a few of these early-stage criteria that require consideration.
Many of these decisions are also foundational to sustainable building design. Once major systems have been selected and specified, opportunities to significantly reduce embodied carbon become much more limited.
Concrete, steel, and aluminum are responsible for 23% of total global emissions, with much of that impact tied to the built environment. Once the structural system, envelope, and procurement path are set, the range of lower-carbon options narrows quickly.
Early analysis focused on embodied carbon gives teams more room to make better choices. It is important to include all relevant stakeholders in these evaluations before the project is too far along. Designers, engineers, contractors, and procurement teams should be aligned on achievable project goals and material strategies before major decisions are finalized.
A Building Life Cycle Assessment is a great decision-making tool during this process and can help teams make more informed, sustainable building design decisions before materials are selected or ordered. It lets teams compare design options before materials are selected or ordered. It can also help identify carbon hot spots, allowing teams to focus attention on the systems and materials that contribute the greatest share of project emissions. More importantly, it helps translate sustainability metrics into project decisions by showing where design changes can have the greatest impact. For example, we conducted a Building Life Cycle Assessment for Intro Cleveland, a LEED Gold mixed-use project. We found that the mass timber design led to a 21% reduction in emissions compared to a steel-and-concrete building.
That kind of analysis is most valuable before the team has already committed to structure, envelope, and procurement decisions. When performed early enough, a life cycle assessment can help project teams evaluate alternatives, prioritize reductions, and make informed decisions before costs and schedules become locked in.
Value engineering is not the enemy. Every project needs cost control. The problem is value engineering that focuses only on first cost. A good value engineering process can also reduce carbon without creating a major cost problem. RMI found that upfront embodied-carbon reductions of 24% to 46% were possible at a cost premium of less than 1%.
A lower-carbon concrete mix may be replaced with a standard mix because it is cheaper or easier to source. A product with an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) may be swapped for one with no comparable documentation. Steel, glass, insulation, or aluminum packages may be substituted without checking the carbon impact. Documentation needed for LEED, Buy Clean, incentives, or corporate reporting may be dropped during buyout.
That is how a low-carbon design becomes a conventional build. The team may still hit the budget, but it may lose the data, documentation, and emissions performance that supported the original business case.
These decisions are rarely made with the intention of abandoning sustainability goals. More often, they occur because cost, schedule, procurement, and carbon considerations are being evaluated separately rather than together. What appears to be a minor substitution can have a significant impact on project emissions, reporting requirements, or certification goals.
The goal is not to avoid cost control. The goal is to evaluate cost, schedule, performance, procurement realities, and carbon at the same time.
Embodied carbon decisions are spread across the full project team. Owners set priorities, budget expectations, and reporting goals. Architects carry those goals into design and specifications. Structural engineers evaluate efficient material use and lower-carbon structural options. Contractors test availability, lead times, cost, and substitutions. Procurement teams confirm whether selected products can actually be purchased and documented.
That is why embodied carbon must be treated as a project requirement, not a general preference. The Carbon Leadership Forum recommends setting project-level embodied carbon targets before a project begins and communicating those targets in the owner’s project requirements, which reinforces the need to make carbon part of the formal project structure rather than a late-stage preference. Low-carbon goals need to show up across the entire design and building process. It needs to be documented in the owner’s project requirements, basis of design, specifications, value engineering process, procurement criteria, submittal review, and closeout documentation.
Coordination matters because sustainability outcomes depend on decisions made across multiple disciplines. A design team may specify lower-carbon materials, but if procurement constraints, contractor substitutions, or budget pressures are evaluated independently, the original strategy can quickly erode. Integrated project teams are often better positioned to preserve low-carbon objectives because they evaluate tradeoffs collectively rather than in silos.
The process is simple: when a substitution is proposed, all relevant stakeholders need to be included in the decision. Without that structure, even strong low-carbon goals can disappear during the build.
Reducing embodied carbon is not primarily a materials problem—it is a decision-making problem. Most opportunities to influence embodied carbon are created or lost before construction begins. While many project teams start with ambitious sustainability goals, those goals only become reality when they survive design development, procurement, value engineering, and construction.
That is where planning matters. A Building Life Cycle Assessment, clear procurement criteria, and a practical review process can help teams keep low-carbon goals from disappearing. The most successful building decarbonization strategies treat sustainability as a project-wide priority rather than a design-phase exercise. They establish accountability early, maintain alignment through procurement and construction, and use data to guide decisions before flexibility disappears.
At Emerald Built Environments, A Crete United Company, we help project teams turn embodied carbon goals into decisions that can actually survive through design and construction.