Make: Volume 74

Embodied energy is pretty easy to understand,

which is why I personally use it as the reference

number. As you can imagine, embodied carbon

could vary greatly depending on the energy

source that was used to produce the material. If

we were making all of these materials with zero

carbon electricity, most would have near-zero

embodied carbon.

But this assumes the material is only used

once. In reality, to compare all these things we

need to recognize that the energy or carbon

impact of an object is determined by the equation:

Energy utility of a thing =

Weight of thing

×

embodied energy

Lifetime or number of uses

This equation tells you some r