The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Carbon in the Built Environment

This handbook explores the critically important topic of embodied carbon, providing advanced insights that focus on measuring and reducing embodied carbon from across the built environment, including buildings, urban areas and cities, and construction materials and components.

Split into five distinct sections, international experts, researchers, and professionals present the recent developments in the field of embodied carbon from various perspectives and at different scales of material, building, and city. Following an introduction to the embodied carbon question, the chapters in Section 1 then cover the key debates around issues such as the politics of embodied carbon, links between embodied carbon and thermal mass, and the misuse of carbon offsets. Section 2 reviews the embodied carbon policies in a selected number of countries. Sections 3, 4, and 5 approach the topic of embodied carbon from urban-, building-, and material-scale perspectives, respectively, and use case studies to demonstrate estimation techniques and present opportunities and challenges in embodied carbon mitigation.

This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers in Architecture, Urban Planning, Engineering, and Construction disciplines. Presenting case studies of embodied carbon assessment, this book will also help practicing architects, engineers, and urban planners understand embodied carbon estimation techniques and different mitigation strategies.

Rahman Azari, Ph.D., is an architect, associate professor of architecture, and director of the Resource and Energy Efficiency [RE2] Lab at the Pennsylvania State University (USA). Azari is also affiliated with the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE), the Hamer Center for Community Design, and the Stuckeman Center for Design Computation (SCDC). Azari’s research on carbon-neutral buildings and cities is supported by research grants from the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

Alice Moncaster, PhD., is a civil and structural engineer by background, whose work in industry has strongly influenced her subsequent career in academia. From July 2023 she is Professor of Sustainable Construction at the University of the West of England, and retains visiting positions at her two previous institutions, the Open University, and the University of Cambridge. She has been one of the UK experts for the International Energy Agency Annexes 57, 72 and 89 working with colleagues from around the world on developing a better understanding of embodied and whole life carbon of buildings, and on its implementation into policy and industry practice.