Embodied greenhouse gas reductions in single-family dwellings
Reducing embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the construction of buildings is increasingly recognized as necessary to meet medium- and long-term climate targets. The focus of efforts to reduce embodied GHG have been on using lower GHG intensity materials through material switching (e.g., wood vs concrete buildings) or changing the manufacturing of materials to reduce their GHG intensity (e.g., blast oxygen furnace to electric arc furnace in steel manufacturing). There has been much less attention directed toward the potential to reduce embodied GHG emissions by reducing the amount of material used for the construction of buildings. This study estimates the embodied GHG emission intensity of single-family dwellings (SFD) in Toronto, Canada, Perth, Australia, and Luzon, Philippines using a carbon neutral approach (excluding biogenic carbon) and focusing on the product stage (A1-A3).