Ecological Footprint of the Life Cycle of Buildings

Abstract

In recent years, construction and use of buildings in Spain accounted for more than 40% of energy consumption, 36% of CO2 emissions, 50% of material extractions from the earth's crust and 25% of the solid waste generated. Optimizing the resource requirement in existing buildings is a key step in the task of reaching the community targets for 2030: 27% improvement in energy efficiency and 40% of reduction of greenhouse gases. For this, it is necessary to analyse them through environmental and economic indicators, so that the magnitude of the impacts can be qualified and quantified from the Building Life Cycle (BLC), from its conception, through the extraction of raw materials, for the manufacture of the materials, until the demolition of the building. The paper focuses on the study of residential buildings in Andalusia, covering its entire useful life, from its conception until the time of its demolition or end of life. As a case study, the Ecological Footprint (EF) indicator is applied to a residential project, to calculate the impacts during the BLC. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.