By Jean Lotus

Hempcrete is the SUPERPOWER that can bring down embodied carbon in our building industry.

Last week, the White House’s Climate office held a 3-hour round table discussion on developing a a framework for “zero embodied carbon” buildings.

As many have pointed out, getting operational carbon down (measured with utility bills) is easier than measuring the amount of greenhouse gases that went into building the structure in the first place.

Why is this a crisis? North American single family home construction generates as much planet-heating GHG as the total generated by some entire smaller countries.

How dow we turn our carbon-belching built environment into a carbon STORING mechanism? The answer lies with biogenic, renewable building materials. These include straw, cork, bamboo and, of course, hemp.

For insulation, hempcrete tops the list of CO2 sequestering properties with -87 kg per 4×8 foot wall.

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*Hempcrete tops the list of carbon sequestering material for insulation.*

Americhanvre

Texas Healthy Homes

South Bend Industrial Hemp

Sativa Building Systems

Whitefield Hemp Partners

Hemp Traders

Hillside Center for Sustainable Living

Gradek Contracting & Designs

*Mineral wool is the top product in new homes causing stratospheric ozone depletion, according to the EPA. Source:* *ANALYSIS OF THE LIFE CYCLE IMPACTS AND POTENTIAL FOR AVOIDED IMPACTS ASSOCIATED WITH SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES, EPA, 2015.*

We have to change the way we insulate our buildings. Mineral wool batts and polystyrene foams (expanded and extruded) are harmful to the planet.

It still blows my mind that the EPA says mineral wool manufacturing generates 30% of the ozone-destroying greenhouse gases in a single family home before it’s even inhabited!

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Homeland Hempcrete

HempStone

Complete Hemp Processing

Verdant Structural Engineers

Embracing biogenic solutions for insulation can give us a whole new way of looking at our buildings. (It’s not just about hempcrete, but hemp building materials are DEFINITELY one of the solutions!)

RMI’s Chris Magwood is a hempcrete expert (he even “wrote the book” on building with hemp) but he’s admirably agnostic when he says all biogenic natural materials can sequester carbon in our buildings.

What can a federal definition of a “zero carbon building” do? It can unlock resources and investment for biogenic building materials, including hempcrete — and that’s a great thing.