Counting Carbon:
Understanding Carbon Footprints of Buildings

Climate change has emerged as the dominant environmental concern of our times, and buildings, as a sector of the economy, represent the most cost-effective opportunity for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Estimating the carbon footprint of a building can be quite simple or enormously complex, depending on what one needs the estimate to do. The simple approach addresses only operating energy and accepts broad-brush assumptions about CO2 emissions from electricity generation. More sophisticated approaches, which are not yet well established...