Vancouver leads on embodied carbon policy: How Carbon Wise is meeting the standard

As embodied carbon regulations roll out in forward-thinking cities across North America, Vancouver has established itself as one of the pioneering leaders in this space. Through its Climate Emergency Action Plan and Embodied Carbon Strategy, the city set a target of reducing embodied emissions by 40% by 2030. To support that goal, the city has introduced embodied carbon requirements through the Vancouver Building By-law (VBBL), making whole-building life cycle assessment (wBLCA) and carbon reporting part of the permitting process for many new developments.

Carbon Wise: Translating climate goals into clear decisions and outcomes

Carbon Wise is a consulting firm based in British Columbia, Canada, specializing in embodied carbon reporting for the construction industry. Carbon Wise works with developers, architects, engineers, and municipalities to measure, reduce, and manage embodied carbon in projects in British Columbia and beyond. It is also a 'Benefit' company - a for-profit organization legally bound to operating in a responsible and sustainable manner.

"We're always experimenting with different software, and One Click LCA has landed and remained as our control, full life cycle tool. It's the most comprehensive in that way, and I like using it."

— Cameron Lockhart, Senior Energy Advisor & WBLCA Practitioner at Carbon Wise

Case study: 2555 Discovery Street, Vancouver

For a rental building project along Discovery Street in Point Grey Village, Vancouver, Carbon Wise worked with developer Third Space to deliver LCAs at the rezoning and building permit stages, using One Click LCA to test assumptions, compare scenarios, refine material strategies, and meet the City of Vancouver's embodied carbon compliance requirements.

The challenge: Connecting design decisions with procurement realities

For this project, Third Space approached Carbon Wise with clear climate ambitions and specific questions about their material selection. A key focus was lower-carbon reinforcement steel (rebar) options for concrete structural elements. The team included suppliers using electric arc furnace (EAF) technology, which typically lowers emissions through high recycled content.

This raised critical questions: Which supplier and facility data actually applies? How do manufacturer-specific environmental product declarations (EPDs) compare to industry average benchmarks? Does the data being used in the model actually reflect real procurement decisions, or does it inadvertently misrepresent them?

The solution: Scenario modeling with One Click LCA

Carbon Wise conducted an initial LCA at rezoning using early drawings, then rebuilt the model at the building permit stage to capture all design changes and improve accuracy. Using One Click LCA as their primary platform, scenario modeling became central to the workflow.

For the rebar investigation, Carbon Wise duplicated the full building model and adjusted one variable at a time, swapping one EPD dataset for another and testing alternative assumptions within the same model. Three LCA scenarios were compared:

One Click LCA's material database ensured that all three scenarios were directly comparable, giving Carbon Wise and Third Space confidence in the results. The analysis surfaced a broader insight: EPD facility averages can obscure significant facility-level variation, and geography plays a larger role in embodied carbon outcomes than product specifications alone suggest.

"In this case, there's a temptation to use the CLF average because it produces a lower GWP, but it doesn't reflect actual procurement practices. An LCA practitioner could easily overlook the 'actual' supplier-specific EPD value if the industry average is already getting them where they need to be."

— Elisabeth Baudinaud, Principal at Carbon Wise

Scenario modeling made visible an important dynamic in embodied carbon practice: LCA can inform procurement, but procurement context is equally essential to producing an accurate LCA.

Results: A compliant LCA and a more informed client

The project successfully met Vancouver's embodied carbon requirements at both the rezoning and building permit stages. At the same time, Third Space had the documented analysis to support their procurement decisions with confidence and gained a clearer understanding of how supply chains affect overall carbon performance.

One Click LCA helped Carbon Wise streamline scenario comparison for the Discovery Street project. The City of Vancouver's requirements typically involve extensive background documentation that other tools spread across multiple exports, but in One Click LCA, it is consolidated into a standardized table.

"In One Click LCA, it is all presented in one standardized table. This is more helpful, more industry standard, and makes for much more transparent reporting."

— Cameron Lockhart, Senior Energy Advisor & WBLCA Practitioner at Carbon Wise

As embodied carbon requirements continue to evolve in cities across the globe, projects like Discovery Street demonstrate the value of iterative, scenario-based LCA and the importance of sustainability software that makes complex analysis fast, transparent, and actionable at every stage of the design process.