Ameera Azeez
This article was updated on October 15th to reflect the transition of the embodied carbon analysis from tech preview to beta.
Given the pressing realities of climate change, it’s essential that we take decisive action to curb carbon emissions. However, the built environment, responsible for over 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions, remains unchecked to a large extent. What does that mean? Accurate carbon emissions data is only available for less than 1% of all the new buildings created across the world. Thus, we are posed with the question: how do we effectively limit something we aren’t actively measuring?
Any built structure has two types of associated carbon emissions, embodied carbon and operational carbon. Embodied carbon in the context of the AEC industry refers to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released into the atmosphere during the upfront activities necessary to construct or renovate buildings and infrastructure. Operational carbon, on the other hand, is the carbon-equivalent emissions associated with the building’s operation phase, including heating, cooling, lighting, and power. It is crucial to establish a proactive action plan for managing both embodied and operational carbon emissions early in the design phase by making informed design decisions.
The current solutions offered by the AEC industry to facilitate this have three significant hurdles:
- The first is the level of expertise required to use them. These tools, often with steep learning curves, are traditionally used by sustainability specialists and are not part of the conventional workflows of the average architect or planner working on smaller or mid-sized projects.
- The second hurdle relates to the specific stages or phases of the BIM process where these solutions are currently applied. Because they are data-intensive tools, they are expensive and generally utilized only at later stages in the workstream when the project is well-defined. But at that point, many decisions already taken are considered locked in. Further iterations and design changes incur significant project costs in terms of both time and money.
- Lastly, existing carbon analyses are severed from the design authoring tools of architects and thus also from the actual design process. We believe architects need carbon assessment tools that are integrated into their design tools and workflows, so that architects can iterate their concepts quickly and optimize for the best environmental outcomes at a point in the design process, when it’s most cost-efficient and effective within the project scope.
That’s why we developed Autodesk Forma’s Embodied Carbon Analysis (beta). Early concept planning has the greatest opportunity for impact and at the same time, it is the point where design changes have the lowest cost risk. Powered by a data model developed by EHDD, a US based architecture firm that pioneered the net zero energy building concept, the Embodied Carbon Analysis in Forma enables designers to better understand the carbon impacts from primary material choices and building form during site feasibility and massing studies at the beginning of a project planning process. Architects can evaluate material suitability and rapidly see the influence of their design decisions on associated carbon emissions.
“The biggest opportunity for technology to manage our carbon footprint is by having tools like Forma, that will allow us to analyze our designs, in real time, as we’re designing them. Being able to have that information, that feedback, as we’re doing the design work is really what’s going to enable us to achieve the goals that we need to reduce the carbon impact of the built environment. “
Mike DeOrsey, Principal, Digital Practice Manager, Stantec
Learn more about Stantec’s view on Forma’s potential to curb carbon emissions
The new Embodied Carbon Analysis in Forma is equipped to help architects in early stages
Decisions about building form, structure, and primary materials are mostly made during the initial planning phases and have the highest impact on embodied carbon associated with the anticipated construction activities. Some architecture firms employ experts who use their experience and intuition. However, their expertise is often specific to certain typologies and geographies, yet emission tradeoffs and strategies vary widely between building types and across geographies. And the reality is that many of these decisions made, whether by an expert or not, once finalized, are tedious to modify. Hence, equipping every architect with the ability to integrate data-driven carbon predictions right during the preliminary stages of site studies is extremely significant.
Rather than awaiting expert reports or making costly alterations in the later stages, Forma’s new Embodied Carbon Analysis empowers architects and planners to assess carbon impacts from day one. With this AI-powered analysis, based on EHDD’s C.Scale API, they can easily evaluate their design concepts and iterate toward the reduction of emissions.
“The biggest climate gains are made up front in the project development process, when data is scarce, but the solution set is vast,” says Brad Jacobson, FAIA, a principal at EHDD. “Integrating the predictive insights of C.Scale early into the BIM workflow puts carbon intelligence into the fingertips of every designer.”
This collaboration with EHDD marries their carbon expertise, gained by developing the C.Scale data model and the EPIC web application, with Forma’s excellence in making complex analyses accessible to every architect regardless of their technical prowess. Crucially, bringing carbon analysis into Forma also means it is no longer exclusive to specialists. Instead, designers can balance trade-offs between embodied carbon, sun access, sellable area, outdoor comfort etc. Because after –all sustainability isn’t just about carbon – it’s about successfully balancing all these multidimensional design criteria to deliver on the project goals.
Moreover, this collaboration shares a continuous delivery model; both Forma’s in-app user experience and EHDD’s data model backing the carbon analysis will continue to grow. Over the coming months, users will be able to add higher levels of detail to the materials they’re modeling, have access to better guidance in choosing carbon intensity values, and gain more robust comparison tools.
How does it currently work?
The Embodied Carbon Analysis can be found under the analysis tab in the Forma web application. Once within the analysis, users can define site-wide analytical properties, as well as those specific to individual buildings. This includes specifying parameters such as building program, structure, envelope factors such as cladding and window-to-wall ratio, and other advanced settings.
Running Forma’s Embodied Carbon Analysis yields near-instant results, featuring the lifecycle embodied carbon number (expressed in tCO2e), as well as visualizations such as color-coded buildings that further break down carbon intensity by category of the specified parameters. Based on the output, users can then iterate and compare building designs and the chosen parameters, before selecting a final concept where the carbon metrics are more in line with their goals.
How do these insights translate into the downstream BIM process?
With the easy to interpret results from Forma, architects can feel empowered to start the conversation about their project’s carbon emissions early, whether it is with the clients or internal stakeholders, collectively enabling them to devise preliminary strategies for managing carbon emissions.
Once consensus is reached on the early design concepts, the design model can be directly moved from Forma to Revit, using the add-in, to initiate more detailed design. Once in Revit, total carbon analysis can be further explored with new capabilities coming soon to Autodesk Insight.
As the project evolves, architects will be able to leverage other analysis tools within the Autodesk AEC portfolio, including more detailed carbon management solutions. In detailed design phases, a Revit model can be further analyzed in Autodesk Insight, which offers a new flexible yet intuitive embodied carbon analysis feature and customizable dashboards to better understand the total carbon impact of their designs, and to visualize tradeoffs between operational and embodied carbon.
With the Embodied Carbon Analysis in Forma, and Autodesk Insight in Revit, Autodesk empowers architects at all levels of expertise to carry out a holistic analysis of the total carbon related to their design decisions, spanning from the initial planning phase through to the more detailed design and documentation phases.
As Forma evolves, interoperability with Revit will improve; Forma will work to integrate Insight operational energy results into its analysis suite, providing early-stage total carbon analysis to architects, helping them more comprehensively understand and weigh the trade-offs between materials from the very beginning of the design process.
Autodesk Forma and Autodesk Insight are part of the AEC Collection. Insight can also be accessed with a Revit subscription.
About EHDD
Founded in 1946, EHDD is a US-based West Coast architecture firm with offices in San Francisco and Seattle. The firm is credited with pioneering the net zero energy building concept more than 20 years ago. Today, they are leading the way through built projects and applied research to collaboratively decarbonize our built environment. With a mission to create transformative places of belonging and impact, EHDD works with a range of clients with a focus on arts and education non-profits, visitor-serving institutions including aquariums and parks, and leading-edge corporations dedicated to leadership in sustainability and social impact.
About C.Scale
C.Scale is a stateless API for calculating whole life carbon emissions from the construction, renovation, and operation of buildings. When detailed energy modeling and life cycle assessment isn’t affordable or practicable, people use C.Scale. C.Scale is an outgrowth of the culture of innovation at EHDD, a nationally recognized architecture firm leading the way towards Climate Positive buildings. After decades on the vanguard of net zero energy, EHDD Principal and C.Scale CEO Brad Jacobson, FAIA, saw the need to evolve from a focus on energy use to a holistic understanding of operational, embodied, and landscape-related carbon emissions. Jack Rusk, CTO, joined the firm to build the data models to support this, parlaying his academic work at the Yale School of the Environment to practical applications for architects. Together with C.Scale’s growing team of data engineers, building scientists, and subject matter experts, they are committed to leveraging data to support climate action at speed and scale.