Materila Failure and Embodied Energy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Materila Failure and Embodied Energy - Essay Example Source: Embodied energy in house construction, Energy Efficiency, 2006 Embodied Energy There are 18 criteria laid out in the Green Book that form the basis of ways to reduce carbon emissions. This book serves an effective control in helping construction companies identify the materials that have a high percentage of embodied energy contained in them. This helps in constructing the buildings with low carbon content hence lower embodied energy. Embodied energy can be defined as the total amount of energy that is required to construct buildings using materials like cement, aluminium and steel. Total energy that is defined in this context means the sum total of all energy that would be required to build the material, transport it to the site and also the energy that would be used in construction purpose. (Lucuik Mark, 2007) To elaborate further a company engaged in construction activities in Kuwait might source these construction bricks from China. Therefore the embodied energy of this b rick would include the energy used in brick construction in China, transportation energy from China to Kuwait and ultimately the energy used to lay the brick and constructing it in Kuwait. It would also involve the additional energy that would be further required to process the bricks at the site to enable it in laying. Thus all the energy that is used in machines engaged in excavation and shoring out raw materials, to the energy that is required by the human personnel in construction of the building at site go into the summation of energy of the product which is defined as its embodied energy. (Lane Thomas, 2010) Source: Embodied environmental effects results comparisons: single family home, Lucuik mark, 2007 Source: Embodied environmental effects results comparisons: high rise, Lucuik mark, 2007 Measure of Embodied Carbon There are a number of tools that are available in the market which enables one to assess the percentage of embodied carbon in different buildings. Sturgis Associ ates use a tool lnown as RICS to gauge the embodied carbon of different types of buildings engaged in operations of different nature like store house, work shop facility and supermarkets. The embodied carbon content of a storage warehouse exists in the range of 60% while a supermarket which is always lit up with snazzy lights to attract customers has an embodied carbon of 20%. A normal household is a mix of these two types of buildings and has an embodied carbon content of 30%. Another factor that defines the calculations used in RICS includes the life cycle or the total life of the building. These may vary from 25 to 80 years. (Lane Thomas, 2010) Therefore apart from the kind of construction, the total life span of the building structure all go into accounting the embodied carbon efficiency of materials. Measuring the carbon footprint of a building is a twofold process. It involves calculating the energy that is required in constructing the building and also adding the embodied ene rgy of the materials that are replaced over a period of time during the building lifecycle. Apart from the RICS there are a number of software’s available in the market capable of predicting the embodied energy of the construction materials used in buildings. Apart from this energy the operating energy that would also go into the