Building Decarbonization Practice Guide
Enabling A Zero Carbon Built Environment
Our expert-created compendium of practical, case study-based guidance is available free of charge. This up-to-date reference is a tool that design and construction professionals, developers, funders, and policymakers can apply now.
The Building Decarbonization Practice Guide enables teams to create a zero-carbon future for the built environment.
The Guide explains advanced strategies for carbon reduction and resilience strategies in plain language. Practitioners using the guide will increase fluency with decisions that influence carbon emissions and co-benefits throughout buildings’ life cycle. The Guide dismantles one of the most common barriers to innovation in the risk-averse realm of real estate: “That’s not how we’ve done it before.” Fluency with operational and embodied carbon decision-making and design practice enables practitioners, client/owners, and developers to understand and value the benefits of decarbonization.
Full of practical and understandable technical guidance, the Guide enables action, and is relevant to any project type, at any scale, in any community.
The Building Decarbonization Practice Guide can be downloaded as one 285-page comprehensive publication or individual volumes. If you’ve previously enjoyed individual volumes, make sure you have the latest editions.
Volume 1: Introduction, 4th edition
Volume 2: Universal Design, Construction, and Operational Phase Considerations, 4th edition
Volume 3: Multi-Family Residential, Hotels/Motels, and Similar Buildings, 3rd edition
Volume 4: Commercial + Institutional Buildings, 2nd edition
Volume 5: All-Electric Kitchens: Residential and Commercial, 2nd edition
Volume 6: Embodied Carbon, 2nd edition
Volume 7: Resources (including Decarbonization Codes and Policies), 1st edition
SFUSD Ruth Asawa School of the Arts Culinary Center Renovation by Multistudio. The first-of-its-kind in California public education, this electric kitchen sets the standard for school nutrition.
Photo by Tim Mena
Advance your decarbonization journey today.
OpenHome, KieranTimberlake
OpenHome is a system for constructing customizable prefab homes created in collaboration between KieranTimberlake and Bensonwood. This project is KieranTimberlake’s first to identify a pathway to net-zero embodied carbon. The system also meets the requirements of the Passive House Standard, making it low to zero operational carbon.