Even though we were staying home and keeping a safe distance when we had to go out, there was a lot of work, and progress, going on. Webinars, working groups and communications are alive and well online and on the phone. Technology is keeping us together while we must stay apart.

The carbon footprint of any building can be broken down into two subsets—embodied carbon and operational carbon. Embodied carbon is all the carbon footprint associated with the materials before they come onsite, as they are being fabricated and installed, and after they leave and are disposed of. Sources include greenhouse gas emissions associated with extraction of raw materials, transport of those materials from place to place during refinement, fabrication and delivery, and then operations to remove and dispose or recycle at the end of service life.

In buildings, net zero is commonly defined as “producing as much energy onsite as is used onsite over one year.” A concern is that “net zero” is equated to “carbon neutral,” which it is not. Even in the arena of operational energy, there can still be a carbon footprint to a net zero building. For example, let’s say you are producing electricity during the day and feeding it into the grid (because you are not using all of it). Then you use the same amount of energy at night as you produced during the day. The energy you produced during the day was from a sustainable source, but the electricity you are consuming in the evening, during peak demand, is going to have a carbon footprint.

This home runs on electricity rather than combustion (burning fuels), reducing carbon emissions and increasing energy efficiency while providing healthier, cleaner indoor air. We have recently reached the point where the carbon footprint of the fuels used to produce electricity is, on aggregate, smaller than that of using natural gas or propane.