Carbon Heroes Benchmarks

This feature is available to all Business and Expert license users, however, your project must have at least one tool which is linked to the Carbon Heroes program.

The Carbon Heroes Benchmark gives you a unique benchmark analysis from thousands of buildings that have used One Click LCA to record their life cycle analysis.

How do you see the Carbon Heroes Benchmarks?

Pre-requisites:

• The project must be linked to a Business or Expert license.
• The project must be using at least one tool that is linked to the benchmarks. 
• Excluded are component analysis tools and certain tools that have mandated the use of datasets (such as MPG or DGNB as the benchmarks cannot calculate accurately with those methods). 

The Carbon Heroes Benchmark includes:

• Embodied Carbon results only (A1-C4), no operational carbon.
• New Construction projects which have been completed, and verified by One Click LCA staff for consistency, completeness, and plausibility.
• Two sets of benchmark sets exist, with MEP and without MEP data. 

1. How to get the Carbon Heroes Benchmark in your project

Follow these steps to add Carbon Heroes benchmarks to your project.

• Ensure all mandatory query forms are filled in, this will ensure enough data is present to generate the Carbon Heroes benchmark.
• If you have multiple designs, the design with the latest RIBA/AIA score will be shown by default.
• By clicking on 'Select Design', you can display the Carbon Heroes score for other designs.

You should now see Carbon Heroes Benchmarks appear on your project page as shown below:

 

If you click on the question mark, you will get more information about the retained sample size in this particular benchmark group. If you click on the benchmark group itself, you can select other benchmark groups to compare your project against. 

 

2. How to get the Carbon Heroes Benchmark in your project overview

The design in your project which has the latest RIBA/AIA stage will display its Carbon Heroes Benchmark score on the project overview page. 

 

 

FAQ

Q: My Carbon Heroes benchmark result differs from my results, how is this possible?

A: There are a number of reasons why the emissions in Carbon Heroes can generate different results. 

• Operational Carbon is excluded so that can make a big difference.
• Construction Site (A5) Emissions are excluded, while the number of projects that report on A5 is increasing, it is still not common in the global industry to include A5 emissions in your assessments. 
• The benchmark automatically calculates for a period of 60 years, regardless of your set calculation period.
• Carbon Heroes uses the legacy replacement calculation, which means it only considers material replacements and no transport or waste for the replacements. This will be streamlined in the future when all calculation tools are using the new replacement method.
• Carbon Heroes calculates 1 transportation leg, while some tools support two transportation legs.
• The methodology of your main calculation tool, for example, DGNB, differs in the way it calculates total building emissions e.g. In DGNB the benefits of biogenic carbon are included in the A1-A3 emissions, the D stage is subtracted from totals and the total kg CO2e are divided by the building area per year.

Q: The Carbon Heroes benchmark does not generate, but I have filled in my building area.

A: Not all tools support the Carbon Heroes benchmark, and if they do, they will need the GIFA area definition to generate the results, even when your tool might mandate a different area definition.