A First-of-its-Kind Solution for Climate Progress
The EC3 Tool
EC3 enables carbon smart choices during material specification and procurement. It is the only free and open-access global embodied carbon accounting tool.
Meet our Cornerstone Tool
It is a free, easy-to-use tool for:
Finding and comparing building materials based on supply chain-specific EPD data.
Planning and comparing a project’s potential and realized embodied carbon emissions.
Declaring your products via EC3’s standard format for EPD data.
Auditing and verifying digital EPDs.
Why EC3 Matters
Until now, material suppliers have encountered various challenges regarding EPDs, including cost, slow adoption across the industry, and lack of standardization. With the launch of the EC3 tool, for the first time, thousands of digital EPDs became available in a free, open-source database. As a result, building designers, construction companies, and material suppliers can directly measure, compare, and reduce the embodied carbon of their products and projects.
The EC3 tool also allows owners, green building certification programs, and policymakers to access supply chain data to create EPD requirements and set embodied carbon limits and reductions at the construction material and project scale.
The Impact of EC3
EC3 has provided critical sustainability data to several noteworthy projects.
Microsoft’s Puget Sound Project
Microsoft – a pilot sponsor of the tool and one of its first and largest corporate users – leveraged EC3 for its Puget Sound campus modernization project, which included the construction of 17 new buildings and 2.5 million square feet of workspace. Using the tool enabled the team to reduce embodied carbon by at least 30% compared to its baseline. Now, Microsoft requires the use of EC3 across its entire building portfolio. Additionally, by utilizing EC3, it has identified opportunities to reduce concrete and steel-related emissions by 30–60% at its data centers and is on the path to achieving its net-zero embodied carbon goal.
Amazon’s Virginia Headquarters
Amazon, another key sponsor, utilized EC3 to create a sustainable construction model for its second headquarters in Virginia. The company stipulated that the 200,000 cubic yards of concrete needed to produce 20% less carbon emissions than the industry baseline. Amazon continues to focus on reducing embodied carbon emissions and has implemented the 20% reduction rule for concrete used in data centers globally.
Integration Partners
Our free, digitally available database is also leveraged by other technology providers in the industry, enabling the carbon data of materials to be part of the decision-making process within the tools already broadly used by building professionals. Here are a few of our integration partners:
We offer an app that integrates EC3 with Autodesk Construction Cloud® to help streamline embodied carbon estimating.
We partner with Bentley to integrate its infrastructure digital twin platform – iTwin – with EC3.
EC3 is integrated into cove.tool’s solutions to help users simulate a complete carbon profile of a project.
2050 Materials uses EC3 as the source of EPD data for its platform.
EC3 and One Click LCA are integrated to provide access to more and better data.
EC3 and the Procore platform are integrated to make it simple to access EPD data within Procore files.
EC3 is integrated with the Transparency Catalog™ to help identify lower embodied carbon products.
We support an EC3 integration with Tangible for better embodied carbon impact reporting.
Access EC3 Today
EC3 exists to help the AEC sector reduce the climate impact of building projects. It is designed to be an easy-to-use, free tool to support outcomes and make it easy to prioritize embodied carbon action.
Building Transparency regularly shares information about the tool and answers frequently asked questions via the EC3 User Guide, which also includes information about EC3 Methodology, Uncertainty, and more.