Regenerative Insulation, 2023

This ongoing research seeks to highlight the carbon benefits of this underappreciated and often overlooked building element. Paying closer attention to the material choices we make for insulation has an outsized impact on planetary and human health. Insulation is a unique building element specifically used to reduce a building’s operational carbon emissions by lowering the energy required for heating and cooling. However, embodied carbon from fossil-fuel-based insulation can increasingly outweigh these operational savings as we draw more energy from renewable sources. Biogenic insulation materials have the unique potential to ”draw down” carbon, to reduce both — embodied and operational carbon.

See this Paper for the 2023 ACSA/AIA Intersections Research Conference: MATERIAL ECONOMIES for some comparison of different insulation types and their embodied carbon.