Data-Driven Sustainability for the Built Environment
Evaluating impacts across the life cycle to inform sustainable solutions
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is developing standardized methods for quantifying the environmental impacts of building system technologies and reducing barriers for building technology industries to participate in data-driven sustainability.
Photo by Andrea Starr
The United States is working hard to cut down on carbon emissions across all parts of the economy by 2050. To achieve this ambitious goal, the country needs to develop and deploy energy-efficient and decarbonized technologies at an unprecedented rate. Residential and commercial buildings currently account for 29 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
To achieve deep decarbonization, we need to make sure the impacts of the life cycles of these technologies, from raw material extraction to end of life, do not contribute to further environmental burdens such as carbon emissions or water or air pollution. However, there is currently a lack of high-quality sustainability data for whole buildings and building components, such as electrical and mechanical building technologies or unique low embodied carbon building materials.
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have long been advancing energy efficiency in the built environment—now, they’re leading the way to achieve true decarbonization through data-driven sustainability that starts from the very beginning of a product’s life cycle and considers a range of critical impact categories such as embodied carbon, water, air quality, and human health.
To achieve this, sustainability research teams at PNNL are developing user-friendly, data-driven tools and methodologies that reduce the barrier for manufacturers to conduct life cycle sustainability assessments and sustainability reporting and to research pathways and best practices for building designers to conduct whole building life cycle assessments. The information that these tools and methodologies provide is essential for minimizing environmental impacts and optimizing the efficiency and benefits of energy-efficient and decarbonized technologies.