2030 Challenge for Products backed by BuildingGreen—first two Hanley Award winners work together.

Today, Architecture 2030 is issuing the 2030 Challenge for Products, a plan to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the manufacturing and transportation of building products. Working with Architecture 2030, BuildingGreen, Inc. will act as the information hub for the Challenge, helping to guide the architectural community and manufacturers through the development process as the industry ramps up to meet the Challenge.

BuildingGreen has long recognized the growing significance of the building product manufacturing sector in contributing to greenhouse gas emissions—due to the embodied energy and emissions of building products—but action has been slow. “Too often manufacturers and specifiers aren't giving enough attention to the carbon footprint of green products,” explains Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen and executive editor of its GreenSpec Directory of green building products.. “In many cases we're hobbled by a lack of data. This new challenge will focus attention on this critical issue, and our company will actively support it.”

BuildingGreen’s involvement will help ensure the Challenge leads to robust and comparable measures of the embodied carbon-equivalent of building products (measuring not just carbon emissions, but other greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change). BuildingGreen will first develop a webpage devoted to embodied carbon issues that will provide information about the Challenge and current efforts to develop Product Category Rules, which underlie the measurement effort.

BuildingGreen will provide deeper guidance by product category over time, reflecting the status of PCR and benchmarking efforts. Through the Material Research Collaborative, BuildingGreen’s recently announced strategic partnership with Healthy Building Network, the two companies will focus attention on providing a pathway to achievement, so that designers and manufacturers engaged in the Challenge have a place to turn for current information and guidance. “By 2013 we will feature carbon footprint data in our GreenSpec database, and through our link to Pharos,” says Wilson.

Ed Mazria, FAIA, founder of Architecture 2030, and Alex Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen, are the first and second recipients of the prestigious Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing. With the backing of both of these industry leaders, and following on the heals of the influential 2030 Challenge for Buildings launched in 2006, this new Challenge has the potential to significantly reduce the embodied impact of products, and manufacturing process. With green building professionals beginning to deliver dramatically increased energy efficiency for buildings, it’s time to focus also on reducing embodied energy of materials, so that we can achieve truly net-zero buildings.

About BuildingGreen, Inc.

BuildingGreen has been creating knowledge to support practice since 1992. Building professionals gather around BuildingGreen’s rich array of media and information resources, including the award-winning Environmental Building News, BuildingGreen Suite of online tools, GreenSpec Directory of products, and LEEDuser web tool, so they can work smarter. Not harder. www.buildinggreen.com.