In an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Ryan Zizzo, Founder & CEO of Mantle Developments, discusses the urgent need for businesses in the built environment to address embodied carbon—a critical but often overlooked contributor to climate change. As a leader in climate-smart infrastructure and buildings, Ryan shares insights on how SMEs in construction and real estate can integrate sustainability into their supply chains, reduce emissions without increasing costs, and stay competitive in a low-carbon economy. From shaping Toronto’s first embodied carbon policy to working with manufacturers to develop low-carbon materials, Ryan’s expertise is helping Canada transition to a greener, more sustainable future.
Ryan Zizzo is Founder & CEO at Mantle Developments, a Toronto-based climate change consultancy focused on climate-smart infrastructure and buildings. His team helps projects go beyond energy efficiency, incorporating resilience and life cycle approaches to make projects future-proof and net-zero carbon-ready.
Ryan is a recognized leader in helping large organizations and governments transition to a low-carbon future. Ryan’s work has directly supported an update to the Toronto Green Standard version 4, North America’s first policy to limit embodied carbon on certain types of new building construction. He has also contributed to the development of the Government of Canada’s Standard on Embodied Carbon in Construction which requires low-carbon concrete on large federal construction projects. Ryan has also worked with leading organizations like the YMCA of Greater Toronto to help quantify and minimize the carbon impacts associated with major construction projects.
Ryan holds a master’s degree in applied science in Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor in Science and Engineering in Civil (structural), from Queen’s University, is a licensed engineer in the province of Ontario, and holds a LEED Accredited Professional designation in Neighbourhood Development.
Ryan was named one of Canada’s Clean50 for 2024.
As the founder and CEO of Mantle Development, can you share your journey in establishing a consultancy focused on climate-smart infrastructure and buildings? What inspired you to specialize in this niche?
I studied structural engineering as my undergrad. I loved the idea of contributing to the creation of the buildings and cities in which we live. I soon realized that structural design wasn’t exactly the most innovative field – and for good reason: we need to be conservative when dealing with life safety. That means sticking with what works.
To ensure my career included innovative elements and had strong growth potential, I decided to focus my masters on the (at the time) new field of “green buildings”, or how to make buildings less environmentally damaging, so I studied Sustainable Infrastructure within Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto.
I then worked for nearly a decade with one of Canada’s leading green building engineering firms, mainly focused on helping large developers update their designs to be more green so they could obtain LEED certification.
I then decided to relocate to Helsinki, Finland for a few years. That’s where I “saw the future” of my industry since the Nordics are years ahead of North America when it comes to sustainability. It was there I was introduced to the huge environmental impact of material manufacture and transportation within the construction industry – the so-called “embodied carbon” of our buildings and infrastructure. At the time, this concept wasn’t widely known in North America and basically no one in North America was managing it, even on “green” projects. I realized it was a massive blind spot for the North American industry so after three years in Finland, I moved back home to Toronto in 2015 to start my own consultancy focused on embodied carbon management in construction.
Mantle Development emphasizes “deep technical expertise in embodied carbon.” Could you explain the concept of embodied carbon and why it’s crucial for businesses in the built environment to address it?
The carbon footprint of a building or piece of infrastructure can be broken down into two main pieces: the “operational carbon” emissions associated with the annual use of the asset (from the energy used to heat, cool, power, plus the impact of refrigerants), and the “embodied carbon” emissions associated with creating, maintaining, and decommissioning the asset (from manufacture, transport, and other processes).
As an industry, we’ve been focused on reducing operational carbon for years through increased energy efficiency and by greening our energy systems (via more renewables and less coal). In North America, we’re only starting to understand and manage / reduce our embodied carbon. As operational carbon drops, embodied carbon becomes a relatively larger part of our emissions profile. It needs to be tackled for us to reach net zero.
Your company works with various stakeholders, from real estate companies to policymakers. How do you tailor your approach to meet the diverse needs of these clients while maintaining a focus on positive climate impact and successful business outcomes?
We try to meet our clients where they are on their climate journey and keep their long-term goals in mind. We recognize that each organization is different in terms of its climate action starting point, priorities, appetite for change, and the speed at which they can implement climate solutions. We try to understand our client’s drivers, their pain points, and what success looks like for them. From there, it’s all about execution, translating complex concepts into plain language, and providing them with actionable insights to help identify and prioritize win-win opportunities that are good for the planet and their business.
Mantle Development has been involved in several significant projects, including developing Toronto’s first policy to limit embodied carbon in new building construction. Can you highlight a project that you believe has substantially impacted decarbonizing the built environment?
We performed a case study as part of the work that led to that Toronto Green Standard update related to embodied carbon – which was actually the first municipal policy in North America to limit embodied carbon on certain buildings. In the case study, a new City of Toronto building had just completed the detailed design but hadn’t gone out for procurement yet, and although many green solutions were included in the design, a comprehensive investigation into embodied carbon hadn’t been performed. We were brought in to help perform a full embodied carbon assessment and were able to identify a handful of like-for-like material substitutions with significantly lower embodied carbon footprints without any significant cost impacts. For example, we suggested changing the insulation type, using a lower-carbon concrete mix, and using a less volatile coating to seal the concrete. These three changes resulted in a 26% reduction in the embodied carbon of the building and avoided 800 tonnes of carbon dioxide while being cost-neutral and not impacting the schedule.
In another project, we examined the supply chain of a steel fabrication company and uncovered that they were purchasing steel from a steel supplier who was sourcing the material from inefficient steel mills from across the continent that were using outdated technology, including coal-fired furnaces, resulting in a high embodied carbon footprint for their product. We identified a modern steel mill closer to the fabricator (meaning less transportation emissions) that used new high-efficiency equipment, scrap steel as an input and that was fully electric. The slightly higher cost of this local green steel was offset by getting rid of the middleman when the fabricator started purchasing directly from the new mill instead of from their previous steel supplier. This slashed the embodied carbon of our client’s product by 50% without impacting costs. We then created an environmental product declaration (EPD) for them, which reports the carbon footprint of their product following internationally recognized carbon accounting standards.
Looking ahead, what advice would you offer to small and medium-sized businesses in the construction and real estate sectors who want to improve their climate performance but may be unsure where to start?
Ask your suppliers what their carbon footprint is and what they’re doing to reduce it. Or better yet, ask them to send you their latest emissions inventory, sustainability report, and for manufacturers their environmental product declaration (EPD). This is increasingly becoming part of business-as-usual for large multi-national organizations but is still new to many medium and small businesses. Carbon needs to become one of the metrics we take into account when making purchasing decisions. Whenever we’re comparing cost we should also compare carbon. You’ll be surprised that sometimes the lower carbon materials can also be lower cost and sometimes there is only a small incremental cost associated with a large reduction in carbon.
Find opportunities to cost-effectively drive down your carbon footprint, and compare it to your competitors. Publicly report your emissions and your climate journey on your website and in your annual reporting. Being a lower-carbon alternative can open new opportunities and give you a competitive advantage. Your clients and employees will thank you.
The post Building Climate Leaders: Decarbonizing Construction first appeared on CanadianSME Small Business Magazine.