Carbon footprinting in the building construction sector

Abstract

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (8569)

[EN] In order to decrease global warming, carbon emissions to the atmosphere must be reduced. Pressures from different sources are rising with this aim, and several policies already exist in order to limit the quantity of allowed pollutants released by emitters. The most affected, is industrial activity, source of the majority of contamination and more specifically the construction sector, responsible of 40% to 50% of the total. These companies must quantify the carbon emissions generated by their processes and achieve reductions to accomplish the established limits. Nevertheless, there currently exists a lack of tools guiding these companies on how to do their carbon disclosure assessments. The aim of this research is to set up the basis for a methodology to quantify these emissions and apply this to different building materials and processes. The results show that in some cases, for products, just a change in the raw material used, becomes in reductions up to 75% on embodied carbon. For processes, re-planning in terms of tool size used, could become in reduction of embodied pollutants and what is more, cost minimisation as a consequence of a better energy usage. Thus, comparisons between embodied carbon emissions of products and processes can be done, providing companies with information about where to focus the reduction efforts.