Buildings alone are responsible for 6% of the global annual greenhouse gas emissions (about 3Gt CO2e — equivalent to those from India) which come from the construction (e.g. production of materials) and the usage of buildings (e.g. water and air heating, freezing).
Most of these emissions can be avoided at no incremental cost and are just the result of an inappropiate design and use of buildings
The big chunk of building’s emissions come from construction materials, namely steel and cement (which, in all sectors combined, account for c. 10% of all emissions) and plastics.
As Bill Gates wrote in his new book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” — for which you can read my reactions in this article — the way we make things is the major source of emissions globally:
The sad story is that the emissions from creating these materials are very hard to avoid. The processes we use to obtain cement and steel inherently emit carbon dioxide.
Make a ton of cement, and you’ll get a ton of carbon dioxide — from How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
Thus changing the way we ‘make things’ actually relies on changing the materials we use.
Are you still here? Great because so far we have only discussed the emissions from contructing a building, but what about those from actually living on it?
A good design in the first place is key for reducing lifetime emissions from buildings
An environmental friendly building design must optimize its water and energy efficiency, have a system for a sustainable water treatment in place, capture and use as much rain water as possible, create air flow channels for natural ventilation (that avoids the use of ACs) and blends with nature in the surroundings.
If you are considering building a house and need advise or you simply want to know more about sustainable construction, please get in contact at perezgarciarobert@gmail.com.
