Buildings are significant contributors of greenhouse gases (GHGs). You may have seen the figures that 38% of all global GHG emissions can be attributed to the construction and operation of buildings. When considering the extraction and manufacturing of steel and cement, ~10% of global emissions can be tracked back to just these two materials. But, what can the structural engineering profession do about this? [Will Arnold of IStructE](https://doi.org/10.56330/SDZM2461) describes the impact that structural engineers have by comparing to common day-to-day consumer impacts. For example, cutting a round-trip economy flight from New York to London will save $\approx 1000 kgCO_2 e$. Cutting meat, dairy, and beer from your diet will save $\approx 2000 kgCO_2 e/year$. Stopping driving your car will save $\approx 3000 kgCO_2 e/year$. But... resizing steel members to maximize utilization, reducing the tonnage by 15% will save $\approx 110,000 kgCO_2 e$. Or convincing a client to reduce a mixed-use development size from $10,700 ft^2$ to 9500 $9500 ft^2$ saves $\approx 400,000 kgCO_2 e$. While individual actions are certainly important and required to reverse global warming, they are orders of magnitude smaller than the impact that the structural engineer might have in their professional work. # Navigation Return: [[Home]] Suggested Next: [[How to Perform an LCA]]