ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the urgent need for energy-efficient, low-carbon buildings to mitigate climate change impacts arising from the use of fossil fuels. A separate impact of fossil fuel usage is examined through looking at the adequacy of infrastructures to meet the anticipated energy requirements in the near future. The global and UK performance for energy and carbon has shown that a transition is under way from fossil fuels and towards low-carbon alternatives. To understand the exceptional challenge for sustainable development in the context of the built environment, it is necessary to start from a perspective of the wider nature and range of environmental factors that threaten man’s continued habitation on Earth and then identify those causes that specifically arise from the built environment. A major study was undertaken by a group of scientists in 2009 to identify the principal environmental processes that could cause significant disruption to human life on Earth.
