RESET® Embodied Carbon
The RESET Embodied Carbon Standard provides users with a powerful methodology for assessing, scoring, and benchmarking embodied carbon for projects and products.
The RESET Embodied Carbon Standard is currently in Active Pilot phase. To participate, please reach out at info[at]reset.build. You can learn more about the Active Pilot Phase in the RESET Initiatives page.
1. What is RESET Embodied Carbon?
RESET Embodied Carbon is a standard and certification program that provides quantified and third-party verified environmental data of projects. It is based on life cycle assessment with pre-set categories of parameters. The results help users tangibly improve, benchmark, and communicate progress. For example:
- "Our carbon footprint has been reduced by 21.3%"
- "Our carbon footprint is 24.6% lower than industry average"
- "Our Total Carbon Score has improved by 42.2%"
- "Our Total Carbon Score is 23.2% better than industry average"
RESET Embodied Carbon is part of the RESET Embodied Standard.
All projects pursuing the RESET Standard are scored according to the RESET Elemental scoring and benchmarking framework. Within RESET Elemental, all products are weighted equally. This enables projects to be scored and benchmarked at scale, rapidly and cost effectively. Projects seeking full quantification of embodied project impact choose to pursue the Weighted approach.
Accounting Methods for Projects
The RESET Embodied Standard uses two distinct, yet complimentary, accounting methods:
Elemental
This approach considers all products equally, irrespective of weight, quantity, or budget contribution. It empowers project teams to score and benchmark ALL projects rapidly and cost-effectively, tracking firm-wide progress from project-to-project and/or year-to-year.
The Elemental project score considers all products equally. Within this approach all products are unweighted for project contribution, thereby modeling an ideal state. When all products are regenerative, weighted and unweighted scores become the same.
The Elemental score empowers project teams to score and benchmark ALL projects rapidly and cost-effectively. It allows for rapid benchmarking project-to-project and/or year-to-year.
Weighted
This approach adjusts the contribution of products to projects based on quantity, weight, and/or budget. This approach yields project carbon footprint emissions, circularity rates, and health content.
2. Why and how to use RESET Embodied Carbon?
The RESET Embodied Carbon Score takes a holistic look at material carbon footprints with quantitative data, encompassing metrics for source-of-life (SOL) and end-of-life (EOL).
RESET Embodied Carbon is mainly used in the form of a score. There is a methodology for Project Scoring and one for Product and Materials Scoring:
Project Scoring
RESET Embodied Carbon for Project Scoring is a powerful way to establish a benchmark for the type of products that is used in your projects. It consists of aggregating the product scores with one of the Accounting Methods: Elemental or Weighted.
The RESET Embodied Carbon Standard requires a life-cycle analysis for projects. The scoring includes the following:
Source-of-Life
- A1: Raw Material Supply
- A2: Transport
- A3: Manufacturing
Construction
- A4: Transport
- A5: Assembly & Construction
Maintenance
- B1: Use
- B2: Maintenance
- B3: Repair
- B4: Refurbishment
- B5: Replacement
End-of-Life
- C1: Disassembly & Demolition
- C2: Transport
- C3: Processing
- C4: Disposal
Miscellaneous
- D: Regeneration
Products and Materials Scoring
RESET Embodied Carbon for Product and Materials Scoring extracts and highlights the actual numbers behind the achievements and labels awarded to a product or material and makes it easily comparable to others in the industry.
RESET Embodied Carbon scores products based on data quantity, quality and performance. When product-specific data is absent, generic proxy data is used to fill the gaps. All data must be regionally relevant.
3. Next Steps and Pilots
RESET Embodied Carbon, along with the rest of the RESET Embodied Standard, is currently in active pilot phase. Target date for official release will be in 2023.
Call for Project Pilots
If there are any projects that want to leverage RESET Embodied to benchmark or highlight their progress towards carbon neutrality or net-zero, please reach out to us at info[at]reset.build.
Learn more about our pilot phase via our RESET Initiative page.
Call for Product and Materials Pilots
If there are any product or material manufacturers who are interested in getting a RESET Embodied Score and need guidance, please also reach out to us at info[at]reset.build.
Learn more about our pilot phase via our RESET Initiative page.