Impact of sustainable design in the construction sector on climate change

Abstract

The demand to reduce the greenhouse gases (GHGs) is a must to address the problem of climate change. This paper aims to help the decision makers locally and internationally to reduce the building's CO2 emissions in the project design phase. The paper studies the indoor CO2 emissions of green and conventional building. The assessment of embodied carbon of a green building material has been studied. It was found that the reinforced concrete has the significant negative impact, as it represents 78% of the total embodied carbon emissions. On the other hand, the insulation materials represent (2%) of the total emissions. Heavyweight cast concrete and the autoclaved aerated concrete have been proposed as alternatives, it was found that they achieved 23% & 50% reduction in the total embodied carbon emissions respectively. It is recommended to use autoclaved aerated concrete component as environmental alternative to reinforced concrete.

Keywords

• Climate change
• Green buildings
• Indoor emissions
• Embodied carbon
• Design builder
• Sustainable construction