Obtaining absolute emissions and upfront emissions per m2

General Discussions
1

Hello,
I’m aming to conduct an assessment of a building’s absolute emissions. In addition I’m aiming to find the upfront emissions per m2 of my project. I’m a student and still rather new to the program. I’m wondering whether the calculation template I’ve chosen (YM 2021) is simply inadequate for such results.

Thank you!

2

Hi Aino!

The YM tool is not the easiest for calculating these emissions as its results are locked to reporting emissions per kg CO2e/m2/a. If you have access to e.g. Level(s), which is included with all free student and educational licenses, you can access the total results right away on the results page.

One way to still get results upfront emissions per sqm would be as follows.

  1. First set your results formatting to scientific, as with decimal numbers it applies rounding which gets you only approximate results once we multiply the emissions by the amount of years.

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With decimal numbers, we get 5.29.

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With scientific numbers, we get 5.288. This is important when we want to accurately calculate the total emissions.

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You multiply (in my case, 50 years calculation period and 1500 sqm building) (5,288x1500, x50) and you get your upfront carbon emissions.

Do note that the YM tool includes the total GWP emissions, whereas e.g. Level(s) separates biogenic carbon.