Built Environment has
massive impact on Natural Environment. Construction process and construction
materials are major contributing factors. Construction materials interact with
Embedded Energies Footprint resulting in Global Warming. The interaction
between these three elements namely, construction materials, embedded energies footprint
and global warming is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood with
clarity while arriving at a conclusion in assessing the exact nature of impact
on natural environment. Currently the built environment is a huge consumer of
depletable energy resources and is altering the planet’s environment in an
irreversible way. Over the span of a building’s life the operational energy
rather than the embodied energy of a building is the largest energy consumer.
Assessment of the impact of built
environment on natural environment demands systematic analysis. Different types
of Infrastructures like Residential and commercial buildings, transportation,
roads, bridges, utilities, ports, and railways, private and public construction
are essential due to urbanization and include every input and output of the
life-cycle stages of the built environment namely; i) raw materials acquisition
and processing, ii) manufacturing, iii) construction, iv) operation, v)
maintenance, and vi) end-of-life option. However, the construction industry
must not only comply with the ever-growing number of environmental legislations
but go beyond compliance, proactively internalizing environmental performance
in a way similar to that of other industries keeping Sustainable future as the
goal.
Studies have shown that building
construction with its four phases including Pre Construction, Construction,
Operative, maintenance and Recycling phase is energy centric. With rapid
urbanization and improved social status there is an increasing trend to consume
more energy per capita. This is also reflected in modern construction trends
and changing sky lines giving rise to new generation construction materials.
Estimates show that about 80 percent of energy gets consumed during the
operative and maintenance phase and remaining will get consumed in other phases
like construction, demolition, heating, ventilation and Air conditioning
phases.
In developing countries like India,
infrastructural growth in general and construction industry in specific,
demands considerable amount of energy. Recent survey shows industries alone
consume about 45% of the total energy generated. Reduction of energy demand
during construction phase is mainly due to embodied energy of construction
materials. Due to extreme complexity involved in arriving at the exact
quantification of energy consumed during the construction phase, reduction
strategies are also complex. The entire process in the Life Cycle of a building
gives rise to complex interaction phenomena between the Construction Materials,
Embodied Energy footprint and Global warming.
To resolve this complexity there is a need
to control and prudently use natural resources to shrink the carbon foot print.
Meticulous planning of growth and proper understanding of interactions between
the three attributes stated above play a vital role for societal
sustainability.
Dr.
Ajit Sabnis
Image source:
www.indiacelebrating.com/environmental-issues/natural-resources-depletion/
