NYU Tandon Researchers Partner with NYC to Establish First-of-Its-Kind Embodied Carbon Benchmarks for Construction

NYU Tandon announced its selection as an institutional partner to support the City of New York’s efforts to measure and reduce embodied carbon in construction.

This important step will provide City agencies the data they need to set standards, enforce clean construction mandates, and make government work better for New Yorkers while advancing the City’s ambitious climate goals.

The partnership highlights the value of collaboration between the City and leading academic institutions to develop practical solutions that support a more affordable, accountable, and sustainable built environment.

"By reducing embodied carbon in our construction materials, we’re lowering emissions, using resources more efficiently and bringing down costs,” said NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “This is about building a city that works for people today without compromising the future — a greener, more just New York for all.”

Executive Order 23 directs city agencies to reduce embodied carbon, or the greenhouse gas emissions from producing, transporting, and installing construction materials. With city agencies leading by example, the City now hopes to promote clean construction practices citywide. But, to develop a long-term plan, the City is taking inventory of how common building materials, design approaches, and construction methods impact our climate.

The year-long study that launched in fall 2025 will finally provide a comprehensive look at how the construction industry contributes to the city’s climate impact. NYU Tandon School of Engineering Professor Semiha Ergan from the Department of Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering, is leading the research through C2SMART, the university's transportation research center, in partnership with the New York City Mayor's Office of Climate & Environmental Justice.

Construction is responsible for 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions. While New York City regulates operational emissions from buildings covered under Local Law 97, understanding and reducing embodied carbon is critical to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions related to the materials we use and the ways we design and construct buildings in the city.

"The city asked agencies to reduce embodied carbon, but that requires addressing questions for which there aren't easy answers right now," said Ergan, a Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering (CUE) Department faculty member who is also affiliated with the Computer Science and Engineering Department and C2SMART. "Reducing from what baseline? By how much? For which building types and assemblies? We're establishing those foundational numbers for the first time."

“We're not just measuring carbon, we're creating the foundation for a circular construction economy," said Mohamad Awada, NYU Tandon Assistant Professor and project co-Principal Investigator (PI). "When the city knows the embodied carbon in existing buildings, deconstruction and material reuse become viable alternatives to demolition and landfill."

Kaan Ozbay, C2SMART's founding director and the project's co-PI, emphasized the research is essential to making any real progress especially in a dense urban context. "Without these benchmarks, every conversation about low-carbon concrete or sustainable steel is theoretical. This data transforms embodied carbon from an aspirational goal into something agencies can actually design for, budget for, and achieve. It's the difference between good intentions and measurable outcomes."

By synthesizing existing data, the research team is developing carbon profiles for common construction scenarios — for example, a commercial building with curtain wall facades and steel structural systems — expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent per square foot. The United Kingdom and other jurisdictions have established such standards, demonstrating the feasibility of this work.

The C2SMART / CUE team is gathering information from Environmental Product Declarations, lifecycle assessments, and actual construction projects, working directly with contractors, designers, suppliers, and building owners. This comprehensive approach tracks emissions from raw material extraction through production, transportation, construction, and eventual deconstruction, and compiles it into a unified, high-integrity dataset.

One of the major outcomes of this project, explained Awada, is to set the stage for the C2SMART and CUE to lead the urban sustainability efforts of NYU when it comes to the built environment.

“New York City is leading the way to tackle embodied carbon, one of the most complex and urgent challenges in the built environment," said New York City Chief Climate Officer Louise Yeung. "This partnership with NYU Tandon gives us the data we need to turn ambition into action and build the foundation for smarter, lower-carbon construction that works in the real world and delivers for New Yorkers.”

Beyond establishing baselines, the team will model reduction strategies, evaluating the carbon savings of low-carbon material substitutions and alternative design approaches.

The research is expected to conclude in fall 2026, delivering policy-ready data and recommendations to guide the city's clean construction initiatives and help achieve its long-term decarbonization goals, including a 50% reduction in embodied carbon by 2030.

The project is funded through Town+Gown: NYC, a program that facilitates collaborative research partnerships between New York City agencies and academic institutions. In addition to Ergan, Ozbay and Awada, the other project leads are co-PIs Hani Nassif, Associate Director, C2SMART; and Frank DarConte, NYU Tandon Research Professor.