Jack Rusk

Executive summary:

I work as a Climate Strategist at EHDD Architecture in San Francisco
Some of my first jobs were in the trades, so I feel strongly about engaging labor in industry-wide decarbonization
I’m not the most talented gardener, but it’s never stopped me from trying!

What is your field of expertise?

I develop design tools, data models, and strategic guidance to help architects and engineers decarbonize their projects. When working on buildings and construction projects, there’s never just one thing at play so much of my work involved organizing and presenting data on emissions related to materials, energy use, landscape, and more to give a “whole carbon” picture and identify pathways to decarbonization. For the past few years, much of my work on these topics has gone into building an open access web application that leverages data models to help design teams plan carbon reductions at the very beginning of a project, when information is scarce but the potential for reductions is high. This application, the Early Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC) assessment, is free to use at epic.ehdd.com. My time is split between developing these data models, advising on architecture projects, and speaking about the role of buildings in our decarbonized future.

A screenshot from EPIC, the tool built at EHDD Architecture to help architects and engineers plan decarbonized buildings and meet time-based emissions targets.

What does your company do, for whom, and how does it fit into the bigger picture of solving global issues with clean tech?

By some commonly cited estimates, buildings account for about 40% of total global emissions. About three-quarters of these building-related emissions are related to energy use, and the rest to material use in buildings. Addressing carbon emissions from both new and existing buildings is an important wedge in any holistic decarbonization strategy. Perhaps just as importantly, buildings also play an important role in climate resiliency and climate equity. Moving toward 2050, I envision a building sector where decarbonized buildings are an essential part of a healthy, equitable, and thriving urban life.

LinkedIn: Jack Rusk