The transition towards a more resource efficient economy require suitable policies to regulate the resources needed to support development initiatives. Unregulated extraction of natural resources to support infrastructure expansion activities has led to resource constraints and environmental degradation. Hence an appropriate regulatory tool is necessary to ensure sustainability in resource use. The utility of emergy for resource use regulation in the construction industry has been demonstrated in this study. Emergy analysis has been identified as a comprehensive approach which is able to accommodate the work done by biosphere towards the formation of resources along with the energy used, until refined products are evolved out of them. An environmentally fragile area has been chosen as the study area and building data for the past 25 years has been analyzed using emergy approach to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings. Different parameters to assess sustainability of materials and processes connected with construction sector has been evolved in line with the thermodynamic principles. Further, the investigations undertaken have also established that a sustainable material use policy can be evolved across the required time periods to facilitate efficient utilization of natural resources and building materials. Emergy per unit cost, emergy per unit area of the building and percentage of emergy content in various building materials are identified as the key parameters that could be used to regulate the environmental sustainability of resource use in the construction sector. Also, establishing a time scale based resource use factor to ensure renewability of every natural resource would help not only to evolve strategies for optimum resource use but also to identify the potential options for recycling/reuse of construction materials.

向资源效率更高的经济过渡需要采取适当的政策来规范支持发展计划所需的资源。不受管制地开采自然资源以支持基础设施扩展活动，导致资源紧缺和环境恶化。因此，必须有适当的监管工具来确保资源使用的可持续性。这项研究证明了能值法在建筑业资源利用监管中的效用。能值分析已被认为是一种综合方法，它能够适应生物圈为形成资源以及所使用的能源所做的工作，直到从中提取出精制产品为止。选择了一个环境脆弱的区域作为研究区域，并使用能值方法对过去25年的建筑数据进行了分析，以评估建筑物的环境性能。根据热力学原理，已经开发出用于评估与建筑行业相关的材料和过程的可持续性的不同参数。此外，进行的调查还确定，可以在要求的时间段内制定可持续的材料使用政策，以促进自然资源和建筑材料的有效利用。单位成本能值，建筑物单位面积的能值和各种建筑材料中能值含量的百分比被确定为可用于调节建筑部门资源使用的环境可持续性的关键参数。同样，建立一个基于时间尺度的资源利用因子以确保每种自然资源的可再生性，不仅将有助于制定最佳资源利用策略，而且还将有助于确定建筑材料的回收/再利用的潜在选择。