Lots new initiatives

Kjell Anderson is the Director of Sustainable Design and leader of LMN’s Green Team and Carbon Leadership Forum chapter founder.

Among Kjell’s many notable achievements are his contributions to Path To Zero Carbon, LMN’s research and solutions for one of the most significant challenges of the 21st century, the climate crisis. This new series researches, summarizes, and prioritizes critical actions we can take today across the built environment.

Emily Majewski is Co-founder of Cast Carbon which combines biochar (pyrolyzed biomass) with natural clay, fibers, and binding minerals to make circular, biodegradable materials for the built environment that sequester carbon.

Because we won’t build tomorrow’s world with today’s materials, Cast Carbon believes that for bold, nature-aligned visions to manifest, we need transcendent materials that can create new worlds now.

Rick Wayman is the Co-founder of the new Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI), which envisions a carbon removal industry that is transparent, accountable, and worthy of public investment.

To fulfill this purpose, CRSI provides technical assistance and capacity building for carbon removal policy focused on quantification standards. Read MORE about the rigor CRSI is bringing to guide new regulatory standards.

Jo Norris is the CEO and Co-founder of Carbon Reform. The company has developed a modular carbon capture appliance that cleans indoor air and scrubs CO2, turning it into a useful mineral. This technology makes indoor air safer and healthier for occupants while it saves energy for building owners.

Their engineers, scientists, and creatives are dedicated to democratizing access to carbon removal solutions for the built environment.

Jacob Racusin is Co-Founder and Director of Building Science and Sustainability with New Frameworks, a Vermont-based worker-owned cooperative.

As a consultant, designer, and educator, Jacob merges his passions for ecological stewardship, relationship to place, and social justice. He is a Lead Embodied Carbon Researcher and BEAM Trainer and Co-Developer with Builders For Climate Action.

Ben Rubin is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Carbon Business Council, a nonprofit trade association representing more than 100 carbon management companies working together to responsibly restore the climate and make a gigaton-scale climate impact. In addition, Ben also serves on the Environmental Technologies Trade Advisory Committee at the U.S. Department of Commerce, among his other key roles.

Kathryn Soter is the Executive Director of the Good Future Design Alliance. The GFDA is tackling the building industry’s 500-million-ton waste problem. Their community of architects, interior designers, builders, manufacturers and reuse professionals are adopting circular design principles and collaborative business solutions to lead the industry on a path to meaningful change.

New initiatives include a documentary film project, and college course curricula.

Robert Höglund is a renowned climate and carbon removal advisor. He co-founded CDR.fyi, which brings transparency and accountability to the carbon removal market.

Robert also manages the charitable Milkywire Climate Transformation Fund, works with the NGO Carbon Gap, and is a member of the EU Expert Group on CDR and the SBTi Technical Advisory Group.

Emily Gordin is a Brooklyn-based industrial designer and researcher. She manages healthy materials fabrication at Leerform Fabrication & Design, specifically focusing on developing materials and systems to repurpose local hemp waste.

Additionally, Emily is a guest speaker and a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design, where she teaches bio-design and materials courses.

Pamela Conrad, Founder and Executive Director of Climate Positive Design, invites designers to take the Climate Positive Design Challenge as soon as possible.

If all projects were designed to meet the Challenge targets, by 2030, they could sequester more CO₂ than emitted — getting to “positive” and helping to avoid the 1.5°C of warming predicted by the IPCC.

Rethinking Removals supports the exponential growth of the carbon removal industry to make a positive and timely climate impact.

The IPCC tells us we need to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and must also remove substantial amounts of CO₂ from the air. It’s not an either/or choice — we need both.

Chris Neidl is Impact Director of Rethinking Removals and delivers decades of experience.

OurCarbon is made by diverting organics from harmful or emissive practices like landfill and reducing the organics to its raw carbon and mineral parts with technology by Bioforcetech.

This new carbon negative material can replace fossil fuel materials like black pigments in products and store carbon in the built environment like concrete.

Garrett Benisch is Co-Founder of OurCarbon.

Sebastian Manhart, Senior Policy Advisor of Carbonfuture, shares exclusive insights into the maturity of Carbon Dioxide Removal legislation and development of CDR targets, financial incentives and federal congressional support across all 50 US States.

This report includes color-coded maps that make data visual, easy to understand and compare all 50 states to each other.

Deema Assaf, Founder & Director of TAYYŪN, an Amman-based research studio is exploring intersections of urbanism, deep ecology, and ethics of place making; focusing on urban rewilding and regeneration of urban ecosystems through urban forest creation and cross-species architecture.

TAYYŪN aims to re-weave native ecologies into the urban scene and rewild cities as a rich multi-species ecosystem.

Nic Goldsmith FAIA LEED AP, Founding Director of the Lightweight Structures Group at Silman, a TY Lin Company explores lightness as a visual, physical, and sustainable approach using a minimum of materials to impact our planet.

Limiting new materials by adaptively reusing as many existing ones as possible is a design challenge that allows for reinterpreting our existing building stock to minimize embodied carbon and create new hybrid facilities.

Collaborating closely with the industry’s most advanced manufacturers and suppliers to make use of emerging technologies and innovative materials –– PROWL co-founders Lauryn Menard and Baillie Mishler begin with the end to envision a circular outcome that manifests regenerative design from the outset.