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AIA Bronx presents:  Reducing Embodied Carbon to Reduce Global Warming

AIA Bronx presents:  Reducing Embodied Carbon to Reduce Global Warming

Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Credits: 1 AIA LU|HSW Credit
Platform: Zoom
Price: $5.00

With 40% of global energy-related emissions attributed to the built environment, and decarbonization of the world’s energy supply decades away, architects can reduce new emissions now with their next building design. This presentation outlines the need for immediate reductions of “embodied” emission in the design and construction of new buildings and renovations. Attendees will learn how architects can reduce emissions meaningfully, even though user-friendly analytical tools are insufficiently developed.

The presentation will provide attendees with the following learning objectives:

  1. Understand why it is urgent to reduce Carbon emissions immediately;

  2. Learn the relationship between “embodied” and “operating” emissions in building design, and their respective relationship to global warming:

  3. Understand why material database and compilation tools are difficult to use, and need more development;

  4. Learn how to reduce “embodied” emissions now, until user-friendly tools are available.


Presented by:
Bill Caplan is the author of “Thwart Climate Change Now: Reducing Embodied Carbon Brick by Brick”, published in 2021. With an engineer’s understanding of sustainability, a passion for people-friendly building design, and a 34-year career in high-technology, Bill Caplan researched the built environment from a human and environmental perspective for more than a decade, contrasting designers’ claims with their ecological veracity. Mr. Caplan’s tenure at the multi-national instrumentation company he founded spanned high technology projects from the U.S. space and defense programs to decoding the human genome; which was followed by his research on minimizing architecture’s impact on global warming. Mr. Caplan holds a Master of Architecture from Pratt Institute’s Graduate School of Architecture, and a Materials Engineering degree from Cornell University’s College of Engineering.