Session · Climate and carbon · Designers and consultants

Dude, Where’s My Carbon? The Hidden Impact of Building Materials – Analyzing embodied carbon in Passive House design

Ben Leer, Emu Passive · June 18, 2025 · Chapter · PHRM (Passive House Rocky Mountains)

What embodied carbon is, how it adds to a building's life-cycle emissions, and how to balance Passive House's low operational energy with low-carbon materials, drawing on CCNY master's thesis research and Emu Passive's certified projects.

Key points

• Embodied and operational carbon defined, and their effect on CO2 emissions.
• Building materials compared by embodied carbon and life-cycle emissions.
• Trade-offs between embodied and operational carbon across building energy standards.
• Strategies to reduce embodied carbon in Passive House design.

Learning objectives

• Understand the definitions of embodied carbon and operational carbon, and their impact on CO2 emissions.
• Assess different building materials in the context of embodied carbon and their contribution to a building’s life-cycle emissions.
• Evaluate the trade-offs between embodied carbon and operational carbon across various building energy standards.
• Apply strategies to reduce embodied carbon in Passive House and high-performance building design.

Topics: Embodied carbon