Last updated 2026-05-15 | Vertical landing page | For owners with 2026 LEED v5 projects or California SB-253 disclosure obligations
Embodied carbon during construction is the one product the rest of CRE-tech does not ship. The regulatory clocks do not negotiate.
BLUF: LEED v5 makes embodied carbon reporting mandatory for certified projects (cradle-to-gate A1–A3, ISO 21930-compliant EPDs). California SB-253 + SB-261 require mandatory Scope 3 disclosure for $1B+ revenue companies starting the 2026 reporting cycle, with construction capex and capital goods explicitly in scope. We surveyed every credible CRE intelligence and ConTech platform we could identify through late April 2026. No public competitor ships a real-time embodied-carbon-during-construction product. AISB's CRE-CON Embodied Carbon Tracker is the only public-facing answer to a regulatory clock that is already running.
Regulatory deadlines — count from today, 2026-05-15
- LEED v5 mandatory wave: certifications submitted from 2026 onward must include A1–A3 cradle-to-gate embodied-carbon accounting. Project teams under contract today that intend to certify under v5 must structure procurement around continuous embodied-carbon data, not a single pre-construction estimate. Effective for 2026+ submittals.
- California SB-253 (climate disclosure): $1B+ revenue corporations doing business in California must disclose Scope 1 + 2 in 2026 reporting cycles. Scope 3 disclosure begins 2027 reporting cycle (data captured from 2026 fiscal year). Capital goods (cat. 2) and capital project emissions are explicitly in scope. CARB administrative penalty up to $500K/yr per company. Procurement and lease-eligibility consequences are larger.
- California SB-261 (climate-financial risk): $500M+ revenue companies must file biennial TCFD-style climate financial risk reports starting 2026.
- EU CSRD (parallel pressure): Wave-1 large EU + UK undertakings already filing FY2024 reports under ESRS E1 with embodied-carbon disclosure; US-headquartered owners with material EU operations are caught upstream.
Working backwards: a 2026 LEED v5 project that breaks ground in Q3 2026 needs A1–A3 data capture started at procurement — meaning roughly 8–14 weeks of preparation from today. A 2026 SB-253 Scope 3 disclosure for a corporate occupier with capital projects under contract needs supplier EPDs lined up now.
The survey: who actually ships this?
In late April 2026 we checked every credible CRE intelligence and ConTech platform we could identify against a single question: "Do you have a public product that tracks embodied carbon while the building is being built, A1–A3 boundary, with line-of-sight from supplier EPD to project ledger?" The answer is summarized below.
| Platform | Operational carbon (post-occupancy) | Pre-construction estimate (one-shot) | Embodied carbon during construction (continuous A1–A3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cherre | Partial (portfolio aggregation) | No | No |
| VTS Activate | No | No | No |
| Yardi ESG | Yes | Limited | No |
| Altus / ARGUS | No | No | No |
| ProptechOS | Yes | No | No |
| Trane Connect | Yes (HVAC-scoped) | No | No |
| Honeywell Forge | Yes (operational) | No | No |
| JCI OpenBlue | Yes (operational) | No | No |
| EC3 (Building Transparency) | No | Yes (free database) | Partial — material lookup only |
| One Click LCA / Tally | No | Yes (LCA software) | Partial — manual data entry per project |
| AISB CRE-CON Embodied Carbon Tracker | Routed to cre-ts-energy-mv | Yes (cre-ad-performance-analyst) | Yes — continuous during build |
Two operational platforms (Yardi, ProptechOS) do strong operational carbon work. Two LCA tools (EC3, One Click LCA) do strong pre-construction estimates against material libraries. Zero platforms close the gap between procurement order and as-built ledger in real time. That gap is the regulatory product.
Why "during construction" is the only boundary that satisfies both clocks
A one-shot pre-construction LCA estimate is not the same instrument as a continuous tracker. The clocks compound:
- LEED v5 A1–A3 requires submitted documentation of actual products used, with ISO 21930-compliant EPDs, at the level of the as-built bill of materials. Pre-construction estimates against a generic material library do not pass the submittal.
- SB-253 Scope 3 category 2 requires capital goods accounting based on actual supplier-specific factors, not industry-average proxies, when supplier data is available. As the disclosure regime matures, supplier-specific data becomes the practical default. Construction is the largest single capital-goods line for a building owner.
- Procurement reality: change orders, vendor substitutions, and material swaps during construction routinely shift the A1–A3 number by 8–25% from pre-construction estimate. If the disclosure is the estimate, the disclosure is wrong by the time the building is occupied.
A 2026 LEED v5 project that fails to deliver A1–A3 documentation also fails to give its corporate tenant the data needed for SB-253 disclosure. One missing system breaks two compliance regimes.
What the tracker actually does
The AISB Embodied Carbon Tracker runs as a CRE-CON squad workflow. It does five things continuously through the build:
- Procurement-order ingest: ingests each procurement order as it is issued — concrete, steel, aluminum, glazing, insulation, gypsum, MEP equipment — into a project-scoped ledger.
- Supplier-specific EPD lookup: resolves each procurement line to a supplier-specific EPD where available; falls back to the industry-average factor with a flag if no supplier EPD exists. The flag is the signal to push the supplier for documentation, not a free pass to use the average.
- Change-order reconciliation: when the GC issues a change order substituting one material spec for another, the ledger updates and the running A1–A3 total adjusts. The owner sees the delta before signing the CO, not after the building is occupied.
- Scope-3 routing for the corporate occupier: if the owner is a SB-253 reporter or the corporate tenant has a Scope 3 commitment, the project ledger feeds directly into the disclosure workflow with the same supplier-specific factors.
- LEED v5 + ILFI + Living Building submittal pack: at substantial completion, the project ledger is exported as the submittal documentation, mapped to the credit's requested boundaries.
Detail on the construction-execution fleet behind this is at /cre-con-construction-execution/. Methodology references at /ipmvp-verification/.
The 8 questions our agents close for the owner in under 60 seconds
- What is my running A1–A3 embodied-carbon total for this project as of today, broken out by trade?
- Which procurement lines lack supplier-specific EPDs and are using industry averages?
- What is the embodied-carbon delta of this proposed change order before I sign it?
- What is the cheapest low-carbon substitution in this project, in $/tCO2e of reduction?
- How does my current trajectory compare to the LEED v5 credit threshold I am targeting?
- What is the SB-253 capital-goods line item this project contributes to my corporate Scope 3 disclosure?
- What low-carbon concrete or steel suppliers in this region match my spec, and what is the price premium today?
- What is the auditable provenance chain for any disclosed number in the submittal? (Every number must be traceable to the underlying procurement order + EPD source.)
Each of these is a structured query against the project ledger, not a generative summary. Every answer cites its source. If a supplier EPD changes, the answer changes. If a procurement line is added, the answer updates the same hour.
Pricing for capital-project owners
| Tier | Owner / project profile | Monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project Pilot | Single LEED v5 or SB-253-relevant project, $25M–100M construction value | $5,000 | Procurement-order ingest + supplier EPD resolution + monthly running A1–A3 memo + LEED v5 submittal pack at substantial completion |
| Portfolio | 2–10 active capital projects, $100M–500M aggregate construction value | $25,000 | Project Pilot scope across all active projects + cross-portfolio low-carbon supplier pool + quarterly Scope 3 disclosure feed + change-order delta alerts |
| Enterprise / Reporter | SB-253 reporting corporation or institutional developer, $500M+ active construction | $75,000 | Portfolio scope + custom Scope 3 mapping to the corporate disclosure workflow + LP-grade reporting + auditable provenance chain + dedicated CRE-CON commander handoff |
Month-to-month with 60-day notice. No supplier relationships, no commission revenue from material vendors, no white-labeling.
What the structured answer looks like
Q: I am 38% through GMP on the Tower A construction. What is my running A1–A3 total, and am I tracking toward LEED v5 BD+C MR Credit 5 (Embodied Carbon Reduction)?
A: Running A1–A3 total as of 2026-05-14: 13,420 tCO2e, attributed across 142 procurement lines from 38 suppliers. Of those, 89 lines (62%) resolve to supplier-specific EPDs; 53 lines (38%) currently use industry-average factors — concentrated in MEP equipment, glazing accessories, and one structural-steel package from a supplier without published EPDs.
Trajectory: if remaining 62% of project proceeds at current intensity (3.91 kgCO2e/$ of construction value), final A1–A3 lands at 35,300 tCO2e. LEED v5 MR Credit 5 baseline for this typology is 38,700 tCO2e; current trajectory earns the 1-point threshold (≥10% reduction) but not the 3-point threshold (≥30% reduction).
Three changes that move the project to the 3-point threshold:Substitute the remaining 4 concrete pours (Levels 23–26) with the 50% SCM mix the supplier already quoted: -2,140 tCO2e, +$0.83/sf premium.Push the structural-steel package supplier for a project-specific EPD; if their EAF route resolves at the published industry mean, -1,180 tCO2e accounting reduction without a substitution.Switch the curtain wall glazing accessory supplier to the regional alternative on our shortlist: -380 tCO2e, premium TBD.
Cumulative delta: -3,700 tCO2e, putting final at 31,600 tCO2e (~18% under baseline → 2-point threshold). A 3-point threshold (≥30%) is not reachable from this point in the build without a structural redesign.
Sources: cre-con-data-collector procurement ingest 2026-05-14; supplier EPDs 1–89 in project ledger; LEED v5 BD+C MR Credit 5 reference document; cre-ad-performance-analyst typology baseline; cre-con-carbon-tracker calculation chain.
Three things to notice: (1) the agent told the owner what is not reachable as well as what is, (2) every number traces to a source line in the procurement ledger, (3) the agent surfaced an EPD-gap problem (62% supplier-specific vs 38% industry-average) without being asked.
Why this is a CRE-CON squad workflow, not a single agent
Embodied carbon during construction is structurally cross-disciplinary. One question routes across:
- cre-con-carbon-tracker — the headline agent; owns the ledger, A1–A3 boundary, LEED v5 + SB-253 mapping
- cre-con-data-collector — procurement order ingest from CDE (Procore, Autodesk ACC, Aconex, e-Builder, SharePoint)
- cre-con-co-packet — change-order documentation and contemporaneous-record building
- cre-ad-performance-analyst — typology baselines, LEED credit reference math
- cre-ts-vendor-standards — EPD validation against ISO 21930 + program operator rules
- cre-ke-claim-classifier — admission protocol on every published number (verified source + numeric specificity)
- cre-pm-quality-commissioning — coordination with on-site QA/QC reporting
- fin-commander — Scope 3 routing for SB-253 reporters; capital-goods cost basis
The fan-out runs in the background. The owner sees one memo per question, with sources.
Start with the agent
The fastest way to test fit is to ask the agent about one specific project you are responsible for. No registration, no email gate for the first query.
Ask the AISB agent about your project →
If you want a structured 30-minute walkthrough against a live project ledger, we are running 6 embodied-carbon pilots through end of June 2026. Pilot scope on the enterprise page.
See enterprise terms + book a strategy call →
If you want to see how the operational-carbon side of the same building is tracked after occupancy, the companion page is at /data-center-cooling/ for AI-density operators or at /ipmvp-verification/ for general portfolios.
What people ask us first
Q: How is this different from One Click LCA or Tally?
One Click LCA and Tally are excellent LCA software. They produce strong pre-construction estimates against material libraries. The gap they do not close is the continuous, procurement-order-level ledger during construction with auditable provenance back to the EPD source. AISB consumes One Click LCA outputs at the pre-construction stage and then maintains the ledger through substantial completion.
Q: Do you do operational carbon too?
Yes, but it runs through a different squad (cre-ts-energy-mv) using IPMVP M&V protocols. We can carry a building from procurement order through 12 months of post-occupancy operational accounting in one continuous record. Most operators we work with want the embodied side first because that is the harder regulatory cliff in 2026–2027.
Q: Are you GHG Protocol compliant?
Yes. The ledger is structured against the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard for the Scope 3 mapping and against ISO 21930 + EN 15978 for the building-LCA mapping. We will not publish a number we cannot defend against the protocol.
Q: What happens when a supplier does not have an EPD?
The line is flagged industry-average in the ledger. The flag is the signal — you push the supplier for documentation, or you substitute. We will not silently use the average and let you believe it is supplier-specific. (This is the most important non-feature of the product.)
Q: What if SB-253 gets delayed?
The LEED v5 wave is on a fixed certification schedule that does not depend on SB-253. The EU CSRD wave is already filing. Even if California pushes the Scope 3 deadline, the procurement and certification pressure does not move. The regulatory countdown is multi-jurisdictional, not single-source.
This page is maintained by the AISB Conversion Optimization track. Last source refresh: 2026-05-14. Numeric anchors verified against the AISB CRE-CON Embodied Carbon Tracker product spec, USGBC LEED v5 reference documents, California Air Resources Board SB-253 implementation guidance, and the late-April 2026 competitive landscape survey (Cherre, VTS, Yardi, Altus, ProptechOS, Trane, Honeywell, JCI, EC3, One Click LCA). For methodology, see /ipmvp-verification/. For the competitive landscape report, see /competitive-benchmark-cre-ai/.