When Your Building's Carbon Debt Is Due Before Its Mortgage
The math used to be simple. You pick a building system, a foundation type, a cladding. You compare first cost, maybe energy use over 10 years. But a new number is crashing the party: embodied carbon. That's the CO₂ released before anyone turns on a light — from mining steel, firing cement, trucking lumber. Here's the problem: that carbon debt doesn't wait. It's due now, in the atmosphere. Meanwhile your mortgage amortizes over 30 years. Climate models say the next 7 to 10 years are critical for staying under 1.5°C. So if your building's carbon payback period — the time for operational savings to offset its upfront emissions — stretches past 2030, you're adding to the stock of warming we can't undo.