April 30, 2020

Carbon Leadership Forum

The Carbon Leadership Forum pioneers research, creates resources, fosters cross-collaboration, and incubates member-led initiatives to bring embodied carbon emissions of buildings down to zero.

CLF is made up of architects, engineers, contractors, material suppliers, building owners, and policymakers who care about the future and are taking bold steps to decarbonize the built environment, with a keen focus on eliminating embodied carbon from buildings and infrastructure. The vision is for a transformed, decarbonized building industry – better buildings for a better planet. Their mission is to eliminate embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure by inspiring innovation and spurring change through collective action.

The Carbon Leadership Forum is an industry-academic collaborative research effort working to link the rigor of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based carbon accounting to industry best practices in order to enable quantifiable reduction to the environmental impact of the built environment. Its research is focused on developing the data, analysis, and standards needed to accurately predict, report, and reduce the carbon impact of building materials and products. Recent projects include: developing North American standards to report LCA results of concrete (Product Category Rules); testing whole building LCA and the LEED green building rating system; and integrating seismic and environmental performance metrics for high performance buildings.