Minoro.org, developed by Grimshaw and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, is a new, free online tool that aggregates carbon reduction guidance and references into a comprehensive dashboard. According to the user guide, “Minoro is the Latin word to reduce. Given today’s climate emergency and the need to reduce carbon emissions in the built environment it seemed apt.”
The Minoro web-based dashboard provides a visual, step-by-step resource for carbon reduction guidance, detailing key actions and responsibilities for building project stakeholders, organized according to a project’s life cycle. The user can filter information by:
“Pathway” (such as "Optimise In-Use Energy” or “Optimise Embodied Carbon”)
Stakeholder type (from owner, to cost manager, architect, engineer, etc)
Project stage (from Pre-design, through each design stage, to construction, and beyond);
The Minoro downloadable “toolkit” is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for use on projects. The spreadsheet includes the following worksheets:
“Responsibility Matrix”: a helpful cheat-sheet that summarizes team member roles and responsibilities by typical project phase
“Carbon Opportunities Register”: a spreadsheet for tracking carbon reduction ideas
“Carbon Management Plan”: a policy template that can be tailored to a specific project needs. This worksheet reminds us of how “BIM Execution Plans” are useful for aligning diverse team members toward the common goal of quality Building Information Modeling practices. We love the idea of developing a “Carbon Management Plan” to align project teams around improved carbon reduction outcomes.
Minoro makes it easy to find carbon reduction guidance that is relevant and actionable to your role, project stage, and interest.
Unlike more common certification frameworks, Minoro is non-proprietary, succinct, and visual. For smaller or newer firms, it may make the process of carbon reduction more approachable.
We recommend Minoro to colleagues, clients, and friends who want to learn more about what they can do to reduce carbon emissions in their role, and we look forward to seeing this tool develop further.
Are you using Minoro? If so, please let us know at 2030Commitment@aia.org! We would love to hear how you are using this tool, and how it integrates with your other carbon tracking and reduction workflows.
Jacob Werner, AIA & Lindsey Love, AIA, members of the AIA 2030 Working Group