March 31, 2014

Four green building programs now have incentives for designers to use LCA to minimize the embodied environmental footprint of new construction. At first glance, the LCA provisions in LEED®, Green Globes®, the IgCC and CALGreen may seem complicated and difficult to achieve. To address this concern, the Athena Institute has released a new guide that demystifies the credits and explains how the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings makes compliance easy.

The ‘Athena Guide to Whole-Building LCA in Green Building Programs’ summarizes and interprets the various program provisions, provides tips on how to incorporate LCA during the building design process, and presents Athena’s supplementary best-practice recommendations for performing whole-building LCA in general.

Written by Athena experts Matt Bowick, Jennifer O’Connor and Jamie Meil, the free guide outlines what to include to meet compliance requirements, how to develop a reference building design, how to reduce the environmental impact of a building design using the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings, and more.

The Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings is the only North American LCA software tool specifically developed for building designers, free of charge and fully compliant with green building programs. Get the free software here and the free guide here.