Leaders across rating systems, industry membership organizations, embodied carbon subject matter expert organizations, and industry commitment leaders
ECHO:
Unprecedented collaboration
Embodied Carbon Harmonization
and Optimization
The Challenge
AEC industry organizations are increasingly reporting built environment embodied carbon emissions. Variations in life cycle assessment (LCA) scope, methodology, terminology, and other factors result in inconsistent reporting that impedes comparison, benchmarking, or setting reduction targets.
These limitations hold the industry back from more rapid adoption of embodied carbon measurement and management practices.
The Project
Following years of collaboration amongst various individual groups, built environment industry leaders came together in March 2023 in Seattle, with recurring meetings since, to discuss a potential coalition to accelerate and strategize how to rapidly reduce embodied carbon in the built environment.
As organizations currently or imminently gathering embodied carbon data from the built environment industry, creating tools and resources, and building awareness about this critical issue, we believe that we can move faster together.
On October 25 at ASHRAE’s 2023 Decarbonization Conference for the Built Environment, ECHO partners presented their collective summary of rigorous analysis, disciplined work, and deep collaboration. Facilitated by Andrew Himes (CLF’s Director of Collective Impact), the panel included (from left to right) Lauren Alger (Infrastructure 2050 Chair | Director of Sustainable Design at STV); Katie Poss (Program Manager, Procurement and Policy at Building Transparency); Melissa Morancy (Sustainability Program Director for the Built Environment, AIA); Pamela Conrad (Climate Positive Design Executive Director | Architecture 2030 Senior Fellow); Kayleigh Houde (MEP 2040 Steering Committee, Associate Principal at Buro Happold); Jessica Bristow (Director, Living Building Challenge, ILFI); and Julie Janiski (MEP 2040 Steering Committee, Integrated Design Principal at Buro Happold).
Convening Organizations
Participating Organizations
ECHO is a coalition convened jointly by five leading non-profit organizations: Architecture2030, Building Transparency, the Carbon Leadership Forum, the International Living Future Institute, and the US Green Building Council. It is comprised of representatives from the American Institute of Architects, the Contractors Commitment, the Climate Positive Design Challenge, American Society of Landscape Architects, the MEP 2040 Commitment, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) (Infrastructure 2050 and SEI SE 2050 Commitment), Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI), and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).
The ECHO Story
On September 26, 2023, the ECHO coalition announced a key milestone in our alignment work on embodied carbon reporting. The group agreed to a first draft entitled, The North American Minimum Project Embodied Carbon Reporting Framework V1.0. The document outlined these draft requirements and is now being shared with partners. We expect to publish public-facing resources in early 2024. The ECHO project is also completing a data reporting schema to ensure that all organizations (standards-setting organizations, professional commitment organizations, and others) use the same data schema for databases and digital tools to gather and share whole building/project embodied carbon data in the same way.
The initial scope of reporting requirements is narrow in focus, as it represents the minimum areas where consensus is already reached across ECHO. This framework will evolve and expand over time. The organizations involved are encouraged by this step towards clarity, alignment, and collaborative action to advance the rapid transformation of the built environment towards a decarbonized future.
The Carbon Leadership Forum will coordinate and facilitate the ECHO Project — taking on the role after a successful ECHO launch led by Architecture 2030 — as it enters its second phase going forward into 2024. The ECHO Project intends to continue meeting to further define scopes and accounting practices for embodied carbon in the built environment, as well as to discuss future projects including the potential for joint participation in a central data repository of whole project embodied carbon data points for building and infrastructure projects, to assist in policy making and standards setting efforts.