Since the 1970s, a key focus of the built environment research has been to improve the operational energy efficiency of buildings. An unintended consequence of operational energy efficiency has been high-performance buildings with higher embodied energy content and embodied carbon emissions due to factors such as more insulation or multiple-glazed windows in the building enclosure. This presentation provides an overview of research on the embodied energy and carbon in buildings and highlights the tradeoffs between operational and embodied energy/carbon.