Every movement has an inflection point from which it was never the same again. This guide will be that for the building decarbonization community. It is the Why and the How for the future of the built environment.”
—Panama Bartholomy, Director, Building Decarbonization Coalition
Accelerating change through building decarbonization.
The risks of not curbing global warming are clear. The good news is that the built environment can play a massive role in drawing down emissions. But decarbonizing the built environment needs to advance now: New buildings and renovations of every type need to be built and operated to zero carbon emission standards. This is a collective endeavor. It will take every building in every community. The entire built environment sector, like the entire world of nations, is in this together.
The Building Decarbonization Practice Guide: A Zero Carbon Future for the Built Environment is a tool to accelerate change. A project of the William J. Worthen Foundation, this is an expert-created free compendium of practical, case study-based guidance; an up-to-date reference tool that design professionals (architects, engineers, contractors, and others) as well as developers, funders, and policymakers can apply now.
The goal of this guide is to enable teams to create a zero carbon future for the built environment. Its focus is advanced carbon reduction and resilience strategies. With the guide, practitioners will increase their carbon and emissions fluency, dismantling one of the most common barriers to innovation – “that’s not how we’ve done it before” – in the risk-averse realm of real estate. That fluency will enable practitioners, client/owners, and developers to collectively understand the benefits of decarbonization throughout the real estate value chain. This is not just a reframing of value. The technical guidance is practical and poised to enable implementation and relevant to any project type, at any scale, in any community.
This free guide helps practitioners turn purpose into results.
Now complete, the Building Decarbonization Practice Guide can be downloaded as one 285-page comprehensive publication or as individual volumes. If you’ve previously downloaded 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
Start or advance your decarbonization journey today.
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The Building Decarbonization Practice Guide is a collaborative project created by a passionate, all-volunteer team of dedicated leading-edge professionals. With your donation today, you, too, can play a part in making this work possible.