This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Design professionals have always addressed issues of performance, budgets, and aesthetics. Now they are also being asked to evaluate the environmental burdens of their material choices. Every design decision can have an impact on the environment. The methods used to evaluate those decisions can often be misunderstood. This presentation examines the process of quantifying the true global warming potential (GWP) to accurately inform the true impacts of building material choices.


Tools like the web based NRMCA Concrete Carbon Calculator help concrete producers, contractors and design teams to collaborate on setting carbon budgets on projects and compares baseline projects to proposed projects to exceed embodied carbon reduction goals. Step-by-step details will demonstrate how to use the tool to set a carbon budget and write a specification that allows for the lowest possible carbon footprint for the ready mixed concrete proposed for various projects.


Learning Objectives

  • Describe the benefits of concrete that can contribute to the reduction of life cycle impacts of typical building projects.
  • Understand life cycle assessment (LCA) and how it can be used to help measure and reduce the environmental impacts of a building.
  • Explore how the NRMCA Industry Wide EPD program can be used to compare the environmental impacts of concrete mix designs to concrete industry average impacts.
  • Follow a step-by-step example of how the NRMCA Concrete Carbon Calculator tool can automate the accounting of comparative concrete mix design impacts.

Pre-requisite: None.