A net zero-carbon building needs to be designed and constructed with limited operational and embodied emissions, and understanding the embodied carbon of building materials is indispensable in the process.

To tackle embodied carbon, the Delta Electronics Foundation has been working with the Taiwan Construction Research Institute to develop a methodology and database to assess the circularity of a building. The database is currently under development. We refer to the methodology built by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Materials used in a building are divided into five categories, including structure, envelope, facility, interior decoration, and landscape. The circularity would be further calculated during the construction, usage, and demolition phases, and we synthesize the five categories to average the overall circularity of a building. If the circularity index is 100%, it indicates the building is 100% circular.

The foundation also supports RMI to invest in a further initiative to move private-sector action of embodied carbon reduction. This initiative takes a two-pronged approach: developing an improved carbon tracking framework and analyzing a series of approaches to incentivize the monetization of embodied carbon. We expect to produce a report that provides the information required for corporations to profitably benefit from reducing embodied carbon and incentivize corporations to drive further action to mitigate embodied carbon.