If you’re taking a Part 3 building through rezoning or a building permit in Vancouver, embodied carbon is now part of the process.
Since October 2023, Part 3 buildings have had to report whole-building embodied carbon at permit submission. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) covers your substructure (foundations, slabs on grade), shell (superstructure and exterior enclosure), and roofing, calculated cradle-to-grave.
At the rezoning stage, what you submit depends on your zoning path. CD-1 rezonings need the full Embodied Carbon Design Report, meaning the whole building LCA inputs and results, right away. Other zoning types (RR-2A/2B/2C, RR-3A/3B, IC-1) can submit a Letter of Commitment at rezoning and follow up with the full report at building permit. RM-8A and RR-1 are exempt.
At building permit, applicable new Part 3 buildings must submit the completed Embodied Carbon Design Report in Excel and PDF, along with the raw LCA data and material quantities. For projects using a staged permit under the Certified Professional Program, these documents are due with the Full Construction permit. There is no separate embodied carbon submission at Development Permit or Occupancy Permit.
You can hit your target either of two ways:
- An absolute number (kilograms of CO2e per square metre) or
- A percentage reduction against a functionally equivalent baseline.
The proposed 10% reduction requirement has been delayed. Under the current 2025 Vancouver Building By-law, the embodied carbon limit remains double the applicable benchmark.
From our experience, timing makes a big difference. When we’re brought in early, we can test structural systems, refine material quantities and compare enclosure assemblies while the team still has options. When the LCA starts after those decisions are made, there is usually much less room to reduce carbon without affecting the design, budget or schedule.
We’ve sat across the table with the City of Vancouver reviewing these requirements directly, and we’ve completed more than 150 whole-building LCAs, most of them right here in Vancouver. That experience has given us a practical understanding of both the City’s requirements and how to apply them across different projects.
We’ve also won multiple BC Embodied Carbon Awards along the way and were named a Canadian Trailblazer in the BUILD Sustainable Building Awards specifically for our whole-building LCA work. Just as important is the experience we provide along the way. You can hear directly from our clients in our Google reviews.
Got more questions? We’ve answered the ones we hear most often here.
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