ABSTRACT
During the past decade, Spain has experienced a huge construction bubble, which has caused the biggest economic crisis since democracy was introduced (COAAT Barcelona 2010). Not only does this high construction rate exert an impact in the economy, but it also causes an impact on the Spanish environment, which has yet to be evaluated. It is necessary to assess this exigency through indicators, so that the weight of environmental impacts can be qualified and quantified. The tools that analyze these impacts generally follow the methodology of life-cycle analysis (LCA) (Malmqvist and Glaumann 2009; Zabalza Bribián et al. 2011). However, other approaches exist such as the emergy analysis (Meillaud et al. 2005) and the material flow analysis (Sinivuori and Saari 2006). Currently, there is a tendency to use simpler methodologies that can be more easily understood by society, among which feature the ecological footprint (EF) (Wackernagel and Rees 1996) and the carbon footprint (CF) (Weidema et al. 2008). Both can be adapted to the unique characteristics of the construction sector (Solís-Guzmán et al. 2013, 2014), but the latter has been chosen for its comprehensibility, transparency, and adaptability (Cagiao et al. 2011).
