COMPARATIVE EMBODIED CARBON ANALYSIS OF APARTMENT BUILDINGS

Abstract

Analysis of building related carbon dioxide emissions is a major focus in the fight against climate change. The emissions associated with use phase of the buildings, called operational carbon, are decreasing due to improved building energy efficiency and the role of embodied carbon associated with construction materials and construction in total emissions is increasing proportionally. This paper presents a simplified method that calculates embodied carbon emission values for building variants assembled from building construction solutions commonly used in Hungarian residential building design practice, using publicly available Environmental Product Declarations for building materials. This enables environmental comparison of buildings at the conceptual design phase, i.e. the ranking of different technical concepts according to their embodied carbon emissions. The article also presents the results learned from the analysis of a two-storey residential building.