Sustainable Building and Construction - International Environmental ...

Sustainable Building and Construction
and building codes, limiting the (primary-) energy consumption of buildings
and their service engineering. These regulatory measures can only be
implemented together with control mechanisms and the spread of building
performance analysis tools, which allow professionals a corresponding
certification.
- Economic Strategies comply with regulatory measures and apply the industry
as well as the domestic sector. The measurements may include e.g. subsidies
for the use of renewable building materials, energies and fuels or tax reliefs for
the investment in energy efficient building design (according certification) and
service engineering.
3. Approaches For the Reduction of Greenhouse Gases in
Buildings
3.1 General Approaches
In this chapter a brief overview is given about the measures for the realisation of
sustainable buildings and the reduction of green house gas emissions in buildings.
Their single aspects will be more detailed and differentiated described in the chapter
“design approaches”.
The lifetime of a building can be divided into three phases, the building process, the
building use and the deconstruction after use, each implying a multitude of different
actions and processes, and related to the sustainability and emission of greenhouse
gases of a specific building.
1. The building process includes the production of building materials, parts and
technical components, their transport to the building site, the preparation of the
building site and the related infrastructure as well as the construction of the
building itself.
2. The phase of the building use includes all activities, which are related to the
operation, maintenance, renovation and conversion as well as the retrofitting
of the technical components of a building.
3. The deconstruction of a building includes all processes which are related to
the removal of the entire building and the treatment of all components and
materials, including the possible reuse, retrofitting, recycling or combustion
and landfill at the worst.
The optimisation and minimisation of all activities related to these three phases of the
life cycle of buildings are measures to strengthen the sustainability and to reduce the
greenhouse gas emissions of a building. “Appendix 2 – Life Cycle Assessment
Tools” gives an overview about available software tools for the life cycle assessment
of building materials, building operation and whole buildings (including all life cycles
of a building).
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