The Rocky Mountain Institute has created a new tool to help people understand how their buildings use carbon and what they can do to reduce emissions from building projects.

RMI provided a walkthrough of its Green Footstep assessment tool at the institute's recent symposium in San Francisco.

The two-and-a-half day conference, which concluded Saturday, helped launched the institute's "Reinventing Fire" initiative -- RMI's effort to change the way people get and use energy. The goal is to eliminate use of fossil fuels by shifting to renewable energy and ratcheting up measures to generate and consume energy efficiently.

Buildings account for 39 percent of energy use in the United States and 38 percent of the carbon emissions in the country, with the emissions exceeding those from either the transportation or industrial sectors, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.

As such, buildings present a big target for improvement and the Green Footstep tool, which is free, allows building professionals planning new structures or work on existing ones to examine the carbon footprint of their entire project -- site development, construction and operation.

Green Footstep isn't just a tool for carbon documentation, says Victor Olgyay, a principal architect on RMI's Built Environment Team. "It helps inform decisions about carbon during the design process to reduce impacts," he said.

The tool can be applied to commercial and residential construction as well as projects involving new and existing buildings, and the assessments can range from the pre-design phase through occupancy.

Green Footstep also can be used to measure the carbon impact of a project of any size. "You can actually do your dog house or the Empire State Building," Olgyay said.

More information about Green Footstep is available at greenfootstep.org.

Images courtesy of Rocky Mountain Institute.