ABSTRACT
Buildings have a major impact upon the physical environment. The materials used to construct and maintain buildings and the energy used to service them, coupled with a typical life expectancy of 50 to 100 years, ensure that buildings create a signifi cant environmental load. In this chapter some of these impacts are highlighted and a number of ways of reducing these impacts discussed
Buildings use energy to heat, cool, light, ventilate and service internal spaces. In most industrialised countries the energy used by buildings will typically represent around 50 per cent of total energy consumption, as shown in Figure 25.1
As most of this energy comes from the burning of fossil fuels then buildings are also responsible for approximately 50 per cent of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. In addition, this burning also produces, globally, 10 per cent of methane emissions, 25 per cent of NOx emissions and 25 per cent of SOx emissions. Therefore, buildings are a major contributor to global warming, climate change, air pollution and acid rain production. In the past the refrigerants used in building air conditioning systems and the manufacture of some building insulations materials released chlorofl uorocarbons (CFC) into the atmosphere where they depleted the ozone layer (the ozone hole) that protects the Earth’s surface from harmful UV radiation. This process had been going on for over 50 years before the problem was recognised and the 1987 Montreal Protocol led to the successful phasing out of CFC production.
