Founding partners are joined by a growing number of participating building owners who actively contribute to the development and sharing of ownersCAN’s tools, resources and webinars focused on embodied carbon reduction in the built environment.
BACKGROUND
The Carbon Action Network (CAN) is comprised of members of the global building industry that are ready to act on the smart prioritization of embodied carbon in building materials.
ownersCAN, a sister program/counterpart to materialsCAN, is a group of developers, users, and managers of buildings that are dedicated to measuring and reducing the embodied carbon of their projects. The group has been created to raise awareness and provide education on the importance of embodied carbon in the built environment, and share strategies and lessons learned to inspire others to follow.
The initiative is part of Building Transparency which is a non-profit whose core mission is to provide the open access data and tools necessary to enable broad and swift action across the building industry in addressing embodied carbon's role in climate change. Funding for ownersCAN and its sister materialsCAN group comes from Building Transparency's industry partners as well as Breakthrough Energy, Building Transparency's leading philanthropic funder.
The full board for Building Transparency can be found here.
PURPOSE
ownersCAN aims to:
- Improve embodied carbon awareness amongst peers, industry, and external partnerships through best practice sharing
- Promote use of the EC3 tool, and other embodied carbon tools that support accounting for and reducing embodied carbon emissions
- Highlight case studies on successfully implementing embodied carbon policy and processes within building projects, and realizing embodied carbon savings.
- Keep abreast of emerging policy/legislation regarding embodied carbon
- Use collective influence as owners to advocate for industry action on embodied carbon. For example, better availability of EPDs and more transparency in embodied carbon data
MEMBERSHIP
Representatives from companies are in development/real estate departments.
MEETINGS AND PROCEDURES
Meetings will take place on a bi-weekly basis. In order to promote open communication and best practice sharing, meetings will not be recorded and no notes will be taken or shared by the organizing members. We’ll follow Chatham House rules.
Note: ownersCAN’s focus is agnostic to the nature of its members’ businesses (e.g., tech, property management, government). All meeting discussions, presentations, and press are about measuring and reducing embodied carbon in buildings and spaces - no business will be discussed.
FOCUS AREAS
- Knowledge sharing within the ownersCAN membership
- Awareness building more broadly through a coordinated approach to events and publications
- Policy and advocacy (if comfortable, not required)
FAQs
What is the commitment in order to join?
We ask members to actively engage with the group by dedicating time and resources in one or more of the focus areas.
Is there an application and/or membership fee?
No, not at this time.
Is membership limited to building owners who have already started work on embodied carbon?
Yes, the intent right now is to keep the group focused on owners who are actively engaged on embodied carbon issues. It is ok to be at the beginning of the journey, but the journey should be started. At the moment, this is an invite-only group.
Embodied Carbon Action Plan
Get involved in ownersCAN