ABSTRACT
In houses consuming very little energy to maintain comfort, the energy needed to build the houses represents an important part of the energy consumed over the whole life cycle of the building. Thus, it can happen that in the path to reducing energy over the house life cycle, at some point selecting a construction or component with very little embodied energy may be more effective than a measure which reduces heating energy. Another important factor to consider in selecting components is the flow of materials that occurred in their production. This includes extracting raw material, processing, fabrication and installation, through to demolition and disposal/recycling. The question quickly arises: what is sustainable?
