March 18, 2022

Announcing the Embodied Carbon Pathfinder

Announcing the launch of an innovative visualization tool for embodied carbon, with thousands of data points in the background based on cradle-to-grave whole-building life cycle assessment (LCA) results from the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings.

The Embodied Carbon Pathfinder is a free web app for experimenting with design variables and viewing pre-calculated LCA results for three typical multifamily residential building types.

Use the tool to select various design and material options and quickly view the impact on embodied carbon for the archetype building. Or, if aiming for a particular embodied carbon result, find which “pathways” through material and design options are available to achieve that result.

The tool displays results from parametric LCA for three residential building types: stacked townhouse, mid-rise and high-rise.

Embodied Carbon Pathfinder is an introductory LCA-based educational tool. It can also be useful for rough estimates in early design, when a custom life cycle assessment (LCA) study may not yet be feasible. For more project-specific results, a whole-building LCA with the Impact Estimator would be required.

The tool currently is applicable for British Columbia, Canada. More regions and building archetypes will be added as funding allows.

Pathfinder was created by Morrison Hershfield and OPEN Technologies, with funding from the Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver.

Click HERE to find the Embodied Carbon Pathfinder.