Counting Carbon:
Understanding Carbon Footprints of Buildings

An Executive Summary is available for this article.

Continuing Education

This article has been approved for one GBCI CE hour. It has also been approved by AIA for 1 HSW/SD Learning Unit.

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:

1. Differentiate carbon counting approaches based on regulation or monetization from approaches aiming just to reduce carbon emissions.
2. Explain the difference between the carbon-intensity of U.S. electricity as calculated on a regional basis from that calculated based on the national average.
3. Identify the key contributors to a building's carbon footprint.
4. List at least three factors that make it difficult to precisely determine a building's carbon footprint.

To earn credit, read this article and pass this quiz.

Historically the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere hovered just under 300 parts per million (ppm), but it’s now approaching 400 ppm. CO₂ is not the most powerful of the greenhouse gases on a per-molecule basis—not by a long shot—but it is by far the most common and most significant of those generated by humans. Various targets have been proposed as acceptable levels of CO₂, most famously 450 ppm, above which the resultant temperature rise would likely cause extreme disruption to Earth’s ecological and social systems. Many policy initiatives give lip service to this goal, but current actions are inadequate to reach it. Based on more recent scientific findings, author Bill McKibben has launched a campaign to reset that target at 350 ppm, a point we passed in 1988. That’s a much more ambitious goal, but one that, if achieved, would more likely lead to a future climate that resembles our own.

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