One offset credit equals one ton of greenhouse gas emissions. And she sees opportunities for landscape architects to work with carbon developers to improve offset projects.Ĭarbon offsets are purchased by organizations to reduce their climate impacts. Her goal is to connect vacant lands with the growing global offset marketplace, which offered 155 million offsets in 2022 that earned $543 million. Landscape architect Erin Kelly, ASLA, based in Detroit, Michigan, sees enormous potential in using vacant land in cities for carbon sequestration. Save this picture! Ellinikon Metropolitan Park / Sasaki. “There are exciting design opportunities - this is not just carbon accounting.” He cited Sasaki’s 600-acre mega-project in Athens Greece - the Ellinikon Metropolitan Park - as a model for how to apply Carbon Conscience, make smart design decisions, and significantly improve carbon performance upfront. To reduce emissions, landscape architects need to take a “less is more” approach use local and natural materials and increase space in their projects for ecological restoration, which can boost carbon sequestration. He called for a shift away from the carbon-intensive designs of the past. “Are new projects worth the climate cost?”Īfter months of research, he believes decarbonizing landscape architecture projects will be “very hard,” but not impossible. He found that “landscape architecture projects can be just as carbon intensive as architecture projects per square foot.” He wondered whether the only climate responsible approach is to stop building new projects altogether. Hardy examined more than 300 studies to develop robust evidence to support a fully revamped version of Carbon Conscience, which will launch in July 2023. Once the parameters of a site have been established, Pathfinder enables landscape architects to improve their designs and materials choices to reach a climate positive state faster. The web-based tool is meant to help landscape architects, planners, urban designers, and architects make better land-use decisions in early design phases when the opportunity to reduce climate impacts is greatest.Ĭarbon Conscience is also designed to work in tandem with the Pathfinder tool, created by LAF Fellow Pamela Conrad, ASLA, as part of Climate Positive Design. Related Article New Green Spaces Don’t Have to Lead to GentrificationĬhris Hardy, ASLA, senior associate at Sasaki, used his fellowship to significantly advance the Carbon Conscience tool he has been developing over the past few years.
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