USGBC California Hosts an Innovative Carbon Forward Summit in L.A.

Concrete with lower embodied carbon was the hot topic, and how the upcoming Olympics will trigger a greater need for this commodity. The dialogue turned to the greater city to lead as an example for the rest of the world, to meet challenges of increased construction for events as big as the Olympics with sustainable materials. The City of Los Angeles was called to build better and the world will follow. 

One such discussion was “LEED v5 Carbon Reduction Strategies: Major Venues, Materials & Measurable Impact.” This panel was led by Steph Hallinan, U.S. Green Building Council Associate Director. USGBC Senior Director Wes Sullens started the discussion with an overview of LEED v5, explaining the shift in focus to better serve the advancement of low-carbon materials. All projects in LEED v5 are required to express the cradle to grave lifecycle and the embodied carbon of materials. Decarbonization spanned across operational, embodied and transportation carbon. There are greater opportunities to earn points for lessening the carbon in projects under LEED v5. 

Turner Construction Sustainability Engineer Mersy Maradiaga later went on to share how lower embodied carbon concrete was used in an airport remodel. Their product, called OurCarbon concrete, uses combusted biosolid material as concrete. This allows the material to have less of a carbon footprint than traditional concrete because it uses a different main material. The use of this concrete in the airport was a success, but it also behaved differently and was slightly more porous than normal concrete. Maradiaga then went on to give different examples of lower carbon concrete, such as Ground Glass Pozzolan concrete. 

The session “Sustainable Intelligence: Rethinking Water, Carbon & Resilience in Data Center Development,” which included Seth Strongin of HDR, Olivier Sommerhalder of Gensler and Patrick Coughlin of Turner Construction, merely scratched the surface of planning for truly meaningful, necessary carbon mitigation approaches that should be required in the construction of data centers. Strongin was refreshingly frank about the need for data center waste heat to be acknowledged, reduced and even, somehow, channeled to other heating needs. This nod to wishful thinking was among the very few realistic recognitions of data centers’ harsh environmental destruction.

Beyond the robust panel discussions, the Carbon Forward Summit featured a curated exposition of sustainable materials like Fortera low CO2 cement, HempCement and Mad River Mass Timber. Habitat education conservation was even mixed in with HempCement planters and native plants.