June 2023
Hablamos español!
Lotus Engineering & Sustainability
Embracing Various Carbon Accounting Methods
As many communities work to fully understand the sources of emissions within their community, they eventually turn their eye outward to better understand emissions outside of their community induced by activities within their community - or a Demand Center Life Cycle approach. In the last few years, Lotus Engineering and Sustainability has helped multiple communities understand these emissions from activities that are well outside of their community but are related to either the demand-centered economy or consumption-based behavior of its community. Embodied carbon and consumption-based emissions are two of the most common areas that communities are evaluating today.
Embodied carbon is all the carbon emissions released during the full life cycle of buildings or construction projects. Embodied carbon accounting looks at everything from the products selected through the end-of-life phase when that building or project is deconstructed. Communities and Local Governments have varying levels of influence or control throughout these phases. For example, in the product phase, lower carbon sources of raw materials can be required or incentivized; many local governments have control over building codes or other requirements for low carbon or low water use within buildings when occupied; finally, local governments can also influence the end of life phase in terms of the requirements for deconstruction. For an example of embodied carbon analysis see Pitkin County, CO’s Story Map.
Consumption-based emissions inventories look at the behavior, activity, and choices of a community in terms of the goods and services that they purchase. Some of the most common examples of consumption-based emissions include the upstream emissions of fossil fuels such as natural gas and gasoline. They also typically include upstream emissions of the food that is consumed within a community as well as downstream emissions from product use all the way to disposal, recycling, or reuse. Lotus is currently working with clients on Consumption-Based Emissions Inventories and those will be available later in 2023. Check our website for updated examples.
Updates on Our commitment to Equity
Hablamos español! Three of our team members at Lotus speak Spanish and are making our community engagement and other deliverables more accessible to more community members. This is important to us as we strive to make our company more equitable, both for our clients and our team. We are also translating our website into Spanish. Check back in the coming months for this feature.
We have also completed an Intercultural Development Inventory to better understand each individual's intercultural competence. This learning will help increase our team’s capabilities to shift cultural perspectives and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities. As part of this work, each employee met one-on-one with Prismatic to review their scores and, as a team, we reviewed our company's findings.
Our commitment to equity is ongoing. We will be updating our website with each practice area’s goals and metrics as well as our progress toward those goals.
Welcome to the team!
Grace Sullivan
Having grown up in Colorado, Grace has a love for the beautiful and diverse landscapes the State has to offer. She loves Palisades peaches and hatch green chiles and enjoys learning about the compelling and diverse parts of Colorado’s historical and cultural fabric. It’s in the unique, geo-sociological setting of the West that Grace began to understand the imperative challenge of climate change and its inextricable ties to race and equity.
Grace’s background and passions continue to meet at the confluence of climate action and social justice. After receiving her master’s degree in International and Intercultural Communications from the University of Denver in 2020, Grace started work consulting in public health and emergency management. She has had the honor of responding to many recent disasters: The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, Hurricane Ian, and the Surfside Condo Collapse. No matter the incident or landscape, she works to advance issues of sustainability and equity through community engagement and the facilitation of dialogue. When she isn’t working, she loves camping, gardening, crafting recipes from what she grew, and spending time with her many animals.
LIFE GOALS: Complete my US National Parks Passport; Visit as many UNESCO World Heritage Sites as possible; Learn two more languages.
Tom Herrod
Tom’s interest in sustainability was born from the writings of ecologists like John Janovy and Aldo Leopold. That interest grew while spending time in Western Nebraska and fully appreciating the unique beauty of the Sandhills region.
Immediately after graduating from the University of Nebraska, Tom headed west to Colorado to further pursue his interests through graduate school and working for the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Having worked at all levels of government and the non-profit sector, Tom brings a depth of experience and a passion to help clients build internal capacity while pursuing climate and sustainability goals.
FAVORITE PLACES: The North Platte River during Sandhill Crane migrations; any National Park; Maine; any place new.