Those of you in the green building industry know that there’s more to our environmental impact than just the operational efficiency of our buildings – the materials we use matter too.

So what is embodied energy and why does it matter?

At its core, calculating “embodied energy” is a method of accounting for the life-cycle impact of a building material. This life-cycle impact includes everything from the energy inputs of the raw material to transport to manufacturing and assembly. Embodied energy is the most holistic measure of a building material’s environmental impact before it ever reaches the building site.

This chart compares the embodied energy of GlasCurtain against a typical aluminum curtain wall framing system.

Pretty impressive, no?

It’s no wonder that only GlasCurtain fiberglass composite framing  contributes to more LEED v4 points.