Material quantities and embodied carbon dioxide in structures

This paper analyses data from 200 buildings to identify the embodied environmental impact of building structures. In recent years, the percentage of embodied carbon dioxide in the whole life cycle impact of buildings has been increasing while innovations have lowered operational carbon dioxide. Operational carbon dioxide emissions are due to heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting, whereas embodied carbon dioxide is associated with materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, construction, maintenance and demolition. Limited research on the latter prevents an accurate evaluation of the whole life cycle impact of buildings. Therefore, leading engineers have emphasised the urgent need for a global, standard assessment method for embodied carbon dioxide. To this end, this paper offers a uniform method by describing current work, quantifying material weights and finally calculating embodied carbon dioxide ranges. The approach is cradle-to-gate but can be expanded to cradle-to-grave. The survey cont...