The greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options for materials used in UK construction

Abstract

The UK construction industry faces the daunting task of replacing and extending a significant proportion of UK infrastructure, meeting a growing housing shortage and retrofitting millions of homes whilst achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions compatible with the UK's legally binding target of an 80% reduction by 2050. This paper presents a detailed time series of embodied GHG emissions from the construction sector for 1997-2011. This data is used to demonstrate that strategies which focus solely on improving operational performance of buildings and the production efficiencies of domestic material producers will be insufficient to meet sector emission reduction targets.Reductions in the order of 80% will require a substantial decline in the use of materials with carbon-intensive supply chains. A variety of alternative materials, technologies and practices are available and the common barriers to their use are presented based upon an extensive literature survey. Key gaps in qualitative research, data and modelling approaches are also identified. Subsequent discussion highlights the lack of client and regulatory drivers for uptake of alternatives and the ineffective allocation of responsibility for emissions reduction within the industry. Only by addressing and overcoming all these challenges in combination can the construction sector achieve drastic emissions reduction.

Natural fiber nonwoven reinforced cement composites as sustainable materials for building envelopes

“…With respect to the manufacture of the materials, the use of more environmentally friendly materials obtained from renewable sources with sustainable processes could be an interesting solution for the reduction of CO2 emissions [4].…”

Scenario analysis of embodied greenhouse gas emissions in UK construction

“…Long-term alternatives are restricted generally to very high-level forecasts, such as the Global Construction series (GCP and OE, 2013), and do not disaggregate projections beyond infrastructure, domestic and non-domestic properties. The long-term projections established for the routemap were largely based on historical trends and did not reflect current plans (Giesekam et al, 2014). Thus, as no robust, independent, disaggregated projections could be sourced, it was necessary to establish novel projections of new build.…”

“…The first is a time series of aggregate construction sector embodied emissions from the UK MRIO model described by Giesekam et al (2014). The second is a database of building-level LCA studies.…”

“…A range of alternative materials, technologies and practices can support embodied GHG emissions reduction (Giesekam et al, 2014); however, greater uptake faces substantial barriers . One barrier is that design teams lack suitable benchmark data on typical and best-practice embodied GHG emissions intensities for different structure types.…”

Power plant wastes capitalization as geopolymeric building materials

“…Previous publications on geopolymer materials investigated the effect of curing procedures, composition of the alkaline solution on strength development and hydration products, influence of temperature [18][19][20][21][22][23]. Other researchers demonstrated that geopolymer concrete is expensive comparatively with ordinary concrete [24].…”