Impact of sustainable design in the construction sector on climate change

Abstract

The demand to reduce the greenhouse gases (GHGs) is a must to address the problem of climate change. This paper aims to help the decision makers locally and internationally to reduce the building's CO₂ emissions in the project design phase. The paper studies the indoor CO₂ emissions of green and conventional building. The assessment of embodied carbon of a green building material has been studied. It was found that the reinforced concrete has the significant negative impact, as it represents 78% of the total embodied carbon emissions. On the other hand, the insulation materials represent (2%) of the total emissions. Heavyweight cast concrete and the autoclaved aerated concrete have been proposed as alternatives, it was found that they achieved 23% & 50% reduction in the total embodied carbon emissions respectively. It is recommended to use autoclaved aerated concrete component as environmental alternative to reinforced concrete.