Abstract :
Better construction and use of buildings in the India would influence 42% of final energy consumption, about 35%
of our greenhouse gas emissions and more than 50% of all extracted materials. It could also help to save up to 30% of
water consumption. This research outlines and draws conclusions about different aspects of the material efficiency of
buildings and assesses the significance of different building materials on the material efficiency. The research uses an extensive literature study and a case-study in order to assess should the depletion of materials be ignored in the
environmental or sustainability assessment of buildings, are the related effects on land use, energy use and/or harmful emissions significant, should related indicators (such as GHGs) be used to indicate the material efficiency of buildings, and what is the significance of scarce materials, compared to the use of other building materials. This research suggests that the material efficiency should focus on the significant global impacts of material efficiency; not on the individual factors of it. At present global warming and greenhouse gas emissions are among the biggest global problems on which material efficiency has a direct impact on. Therefore, this paper suggests that greenhouse gas emissions could be used as an indicator for material efficiency in building. Depletion of abiotic resources is a much disputed impact category in life cycle assessment (LCA). The reason is that the problem can be defined in different ways. Furthermore, within a specified problem definition, many choices can still be made regarding which parameters to include in the characterization model and which data to use. This article gives an overview of the problem definition and the choices that have been made when defining the abiotic depletion potentials (ADPs) for a characterization model for abiotic resource depletion in LCA. Updates of the ADPs since 2002 are also briefly discussed. Finally, some possible new developments of the impact category of abiotic resource depletion are suggested, such as redefining the depletion problem as a dilution problem. This means taking the reserves in the environment and the economy into account in the reserve parameter and using leakage from the economy, instead of extraction rate, as a dilution parameter Therefore, this paper suggests that greenhouse gas emissions could be used as an indicator for material efficiency in building.
Author Name : Raj Kamal Yadav & Dr. R.K. Pandey
Keywords: Material efficiency; resource efficiency; energy efficiency; building; construction; land-use; life-cycle; case-study; greenhouse gas; abiotic resource depletion.
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