UC Berkeley

The built environment is responsible for a large percentage of the global carbon footprint. Many generations of structural designers have developed material and structural systems for the efficient use of natural resources and low-carbon designs. The accumulated present knowledge we have today around material efficiency would be sufficient to design and build with a much lower carbon footprint, if it weren’t for a major constraint: cost. However, current construction economics do not account for the real costs of materials, including their environmental externalities. Considering the actual societal costs associated with embodied carbon emissions could suddenly make material efficiency and low carbon materials more economical. In this paper, we compare the cost of carbon avoidance or storage in the built environment through structural design with other carbon capture technologies. We show how financial incentives for low-carbon design could support carbon reduction targets and provide incentives for design teams to implement them.