Climate Cleanup Sprint Diaries: Sprint 3— Delivery
Delivery of the building material impact tool
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We’ve created a decision making tool to easily compare the impact of building materials on CO2 and nitrogen emissions, carbon storage, biodiversity, wellbeing and the weight of the house. This tool shows that bio-based materials can transform buildings into carbon sinks. In this Sprint Diaries Series we share how we did it.
The goals of Sprint 3
- Deliver the LifeLab website
- Improve calculation model
- Deliver the comparison tool
- Create a concept transaction platform
LifeLab delivery
The Oncra LifeLab is a social lab on the development of a natural carbon removal accounting system to reverse global warming. Social labs are platforms to tackle complex challenges and wicked problems, rooted in a prototyping paradigm (experiment-to-learn) instead of a strategic planning paradigm (analyse-to-predict). The Oncra LifeLab demonstrates our work in progress, meaning it’s permanently in beta. We work in agile design sprints and share our developmental progress in our Sprint diaries to offer full transparency.
Tool Improvements
After extended user-testing, we’ve made the following improvements:
- Distinction between stored, life cycle and net CO2
- Additional information on the house design and size
- Additional onboarding texts
- Standardized the building material spec sheets
- Downloadable assessment results
- Revision and improvements of the datasets
- Restructured the menu and layout of the tool
- Using tons instead of KG
To go to the tool, visit https://oncrabio.web.app/tool
Webinar: The introduction of our tool
In this Dutch webinar our comparison tool was introduced for the first time. Our tool helps communicating the benefits of bio-based building materials and can help with the building materials decision making process.
Concept transaction platform
During the development of this tool, we’ve developed a methodology to calculate the construction-stored-carbon (CSC) of a building together with ASN Bank. We’ll use this methodology to improve the business case for bio-based building projects. After making numerous deals for transactions, we’ll build further on the proof-of-concept transaction platform we’ve made in the summer of 2020 for Oncra. You can find a demo of the Oncra transaction platform here.
Future developments
This tool is just getting started. There are countless opportunities for improvements. Here’s our initial list.
- Link the tool to CO2 pricing and the upcoming transaction platform
- Expand the product database (e.g. with a straw roof, solar roof, green roof, steel roof, stone wool, CLT floor, other types of concrete etc.)
- Improve UX design
- Showcase multiple case studies within the tool
- Full integration with the NIBE database
- Improve data sources for affordability, well-being, nitrogen and CO2
- Create customizable house designs together with upscaling possibilities
- Manually enter material volume list for specific product to create downloadable spreadsheets
- Take smaller materials also into account
- Create a full version in Dutch language
- Version especially focused on renovation projects
- Include circularity and the end of life value into the tool
Do you want to help take this tool to the next level?
This tool is a constant work in progress as this field is developing rapidly. Do you have ideas or suggestions to make this tool better? Or do you want to collaborate? Let’s make it better together!
Email info@oncra.org
Thanks to all the stakeholders
During the developmental process we’ve been in contact with numerous stakeholders for which we are immensely grateful. We would like to thank Provincie Zuid-Holland, Holland Houtland, Climate Cleanup, NIBE, NEN, The Green Village, Bloc, Nice Developers, SAWA, TNO, Platform M3 Architecten, ORGA architect, Stichting Nationale Koolstofmarkt, Dutch Green Building Council, ASN bank, gemeente Capelle aan den Ijssel, BouwN, EkoFlin, Strotec, MEMO projectontwikkeling and Dura Vermeer.
This tool is commissioned by the Province of South-Holland and is collaboratively executed by Holland Houtland and Climate Cleanup. Stay up-to-date by subscribing to our newsletter and learn more about our interventions on https://lifelab.oncra.org/.
