Reducing embodied energy in Australian building construction

Climate change and global warming are well recognised as major issues in sustainable development, with the building sector being responsible for considerable global greenhouse gas emissions. Until fairly recently, it was generally considered that the embodied energy content of a building was small relative to the operating energy over the building s lifetime. However, recent research in Australia and elsewhere has shown that the embodied energy of construction processes for houses is equivalent to 10-15 years of operating energy. Therefore, reducing embodied energy in the construction process has now come into focus as a way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. This paper makes the case for strongly considering the embodied energy of building materials in the building life cycle, and discusses methods that take into account selection and use of building materials to decrease the embodied energy used in construction processes. The methods and techniques are illustrated by a green star environmentally rated project in Australia, which achieves efficient embodied energy usage.