I use this:
http://www.greenbuildingstudio.com/video/carbonneutraldesign.html

I have been waiting for this release for a while now!

j

^^For new projects and additions only, though^^

Thanks, the concept the video shows is very attractive, a couple clicks and you're done. I sent them a support request for more detail.
They still use the 'adding up the pieces' approach, and H3 is beginning to do our projects starting with a 'dividing up the whole' approach. The two can work nicely together, informing each other. Starting with a meaningful estimate of your statistical share of the total (from the $'s), and then bumping it up or down for particulars, means that you can start from a good comprehensive estimate and then plug in detailed numbers to refine it as you go. If you're just 'adding up the pieces' you don't get to a sense of the real total till the very end of the process if at all.

I was sort of hoping there was a format for CO2 reporting somewhere, with a standard layout for logically arranging the data and the tables of inputs... or something. When I get a template for the above idea that seems worth trying I'll pass it on.

i didn't have any answers, but several folks have made posts to AIA-COTE that are worth repeating here:


For business and service industries, you can find the templates here: http://www.safeclimate.net/business/index.php

The GHG protocol website has other tools for large scale manufacturing like steel production and concrete manufacturing. There is no real tool for quantifying CO2 for construction process. The closest thing I found is this link: http://buildcarbonneutral.org/ This is in beta testing still.

We are having this discussion as to how to go about quantifying and the biggest obstacle is that product manufacturers are not keeping track or are able to give the proper information to do an accurate inventory for a project. Contractors are not set up either to quantify their emissions and this is a huge gap in the process. It is going to take some time to develop these tools.

Luis H.

______


Green Building Studio’s web service has a tool for calculating CO2 (as Carbon Neutrality Potential) is buildings as a by-product of their energy use (DOE2) calculator. It gives guidelines on reducing the Carbon footprint for the building as represented in the BIM model.
www.greenbuildingstudio.com

http://www.greenbuildingstudio.com/video/carbonneutraldesign.html

Jim G.

Barry and all,
Thanks for the added links. Are you or anyone else thinking of taking the approach of 'dividing up the whole' and combining it with 'adding up the parts'?

The money we spend has effects that spread out very rapidly in the system, which average out, making it an accurate first estimate of the total share each purchase has in the whole system's energy consumption and other impacts. That the whole system's energy consumption per $ is the same in every economy, and following a smooth curve, adds to the meaning of the measure.

What I find wonderful about the measure is that it is statistically accurate for exactly the impacts of earning and spending that are hardest to account for, since those can be estimated as averaging out, presently 8000btu/$ (1995$). That means you can start considering your impacts from knowing the size of your 'whole pie' and then draw in the scale of the individual slices in relation to it. If you only look at the individual slices that are easy to calculate, you simply never know how far away from your total impact the sum of them is. You could check my dollarshadow.htm

Few weeks back, i was bored to tears by the USGBC Carbon webinares. All I got out of the experience was that calculating indirect carbon emissions is difficult and every situation is different. ok, but if I'm going to spend $150 to learn that, you better make the information more interesting...

I guess you did the two show package and got a $10 discount! I just did the 2nd session and really thought the reason they spent half the hour walking us through simple arithmetic skills was that their deeper content would be in the resource package. No resource package has materialized though.

The one sure way to account for indirect CO2 is to have a global uniform 'CO2 added' tax, and pass the information through. The economists I've talked to about it think it should be perfectly feasible to measure total 'embodied' CO2 that way. They also say it would make it legal to tax another country's goods at the border to make free trade fair... if that country was a scofflaw and didn't collect the tax themselves.

The second best way, (taking a lot less effort) won't be completely validated until people use it and ask questions, but it's to take the total carbon released and divide by the total GDP produced. That gives you a good starting point for understanding your actual total share. Then you multiply by you own or a project's combined costs. I think it'll turn out to be surprisingly accurate, and an a good starting point. I think it's got to do with the fact that energy is both our own and nature's most universal resource for making things happen... ;-)