Embodied carbon and the honest comparison
Embodied carbon is the emissions locked into making, moving and installing a building's materials, before it is ever occupied. As buildings get more efficient to run, it becomes the larger share.
Operational versus embodied
Operational carbon is what a building emits in use. Embodied carbon is what it cost to build. In a leaky old building operational dominates over any sensible lifetime. In a very efficient new building the balance shifts, and the material choice starts to matter as much as the boiler.
That is the uncomfortable arithmetic behind high-performance construction: the better the envelope, the more the envelope's own footprint counts.
Every material has a footprint
Cement is carbon-intensive. So are rockwool and fibreglass. So is steel, though recycled content and recyclability change the picture over a life cycle. There is no zero-carbon wall; there is a set of trade-offs.
Weight matters too, because it becomes transport emissions on every load.
What to ask for
An environmental product declaration for the specific product, the recycled content, the end-of-life route, and whether the manufacturer recycles its own scrap. Those four answers tell you more than a general claim about sustainability.
What Guardian publishes
-
Guardian states EPS is 98 percent air and can return up to 200 times the energy required to produce it, reducing emissions by up to 100 times the volume produced in manufacture.
Source · Products page, environment section
-
Cold-formed steel framing contains a minimum of 25 percent recycled steel and is continually and completely recyclable.
Source · Products page, environment section
-
Panels are much lighter than alternative building techniques, saving significant transportation emissions; all EPS and steel scrap from Guardian's manufacturing is completely recycled.
Source · Products page, environment section
-
A 2,000 sq ft home in wood needs about 40 to 50 trees; in steel, about the equivalent of six recycled automobiles. Guardian states the system saves 20 mature Douglas Fir trees per 1,000 sq ft of stick construction.
Source · Products page; Differentiation sheet
Written by Data Subsystems, for Guardian Structural Technologies. Last updated .
Drafted from Guardian Structural product literature and published building-science sources. Awaiting Guardian technical review. Confirm any figure against the current product documents or ask us before you rely on it in a design.