The National Institute of Building Sciences Consultative Council has issued its 2022 Moving Forward Report, looking closely at the relationship between the climate emergency and the built environment, and charting a path toward decarbonization of U.S. buildings.

The building sector is a significant contributor to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, both internationally and domestically. Mitigating the effects of these emissions by decarbonizing the building sector will take an economy-wide effort, but the need to achieve emissions reductions is critically important.

The report specifically examines opportunities and challenges facing the U.S. building sector and provides recommendations for accelerating reductions in both embodied and operational carbon in existing buildings and new construction.

Among the Council’s recommendations:

• The Federal Government should leverage the significant experience of the design and construction industries, prioritizing private sector input in ongoing Council on Environmental Quality coordination of federal actions around decarbonization.
• The Administration and Federal Agencies should ensure all proposed actions and mandates are working from a common definition of decarbonization, with commonly shared, publicly available data, to ensure shared progress and tracking.
• Federal Agencies should provide technical assistance and funding to support development of a generally-accepted and widely available lifecycle approach to evaluating whole-building environmental impacts, one that balances operational GHG emissions and embodied carbon considerations.
• Federal, State, and Local Governments and the Building Industry should increase investment in understanding and overcoming the challenges to decarbonization posed by the existing building stock.