Louise Hamot to Speak at Greenbuild 2021

Greenbuild International Conference & Expo is the largest annual event for green building professionals worldwide to learn and source cutting-edge solutions to improve resilience, sustainability, and quality of life in our buildings, cities, and communities.

Integral Group is proud to be represented at Greenbuild this year by Global Lead of Life Cycle Research Louise Hamot and her colleagues at Thornton Tomasetti in the session:

The Embodied Carbon Game: Winning is Easier Than You Think

Tuesday, September 21, 2021 | 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PDT | Online

Is timber the only solution to a low-carbon building? Is concrete always the worst environmental choice?  Do MEP systems have a large impact on a building’s embodied carbon? How can it be reduced? The answer depends on building typology, origin and source of materials, HVAC system selection, and many other variables.

As embodied carbon quantification becomes more mainstream, architects, engineers, and owners must begin to understand the key drivers behind their projects’ embodied carbon and develop an intuition for the process of decision-making both when designing and specifying materials/equipment based on Life Cycle Analysis.

In this workshop, three embodied carbon experts with extensive experience in structural engineering, HVAC systems design, and high-performance buildings, will begin by walking the audience through the basic principle of carbon accounting for elements such as the structure, the building envelope, and MEP systems in order to highlight the hotspots.

Attendees will then proceed to design their own building in teams and make the choices they consider to be the most environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and practical for their projects’ goals, based on building design and materials procurement. A friendly competition will allow participants to understand which design decisions have the most leverage on embodied carbon amounts and will empower them to ask the right questions of their consultants on their own projects.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the various stages in the life of a material, resulting in its embodied carbon.
• List the elements with the greatest embodied carbon in a typical and a low carbon building, including structure, envelope, and HVAC systems, from a design and a procurement perspective.
• Identify the lowest embodied carbon material selection options for a building structure, including low-carbon alternatives for concrete.
• Apply these concepts in designing a mock low-carbon building.

Presenters

• Louise Hamot, M.Arch, MSc. Eng, Global Lead of Lifecycle Research | Integral Group
• Patrick Kenny, PE, Senior Associate in Structural Engineering | Thornton Tomasetti
• Alejandra Menchaca, Ph.D., LEED AP, WELL AP, Vice President | Thornton Tomasetti

Learn more about this session and register for Greenbuild 2021 here.