Abstract
Construction is an important sector for climate action. The construction, operation and maintenance, demolition and disposal stages of house buildings consume many resources and have a significant impact on society, the economy and the environment. To assess such efforts, we propose the emergy footprint model of house buildings, which can quantitatively analyse the ecological effect in the house buildings life cycle. The research shows the following. China’s ecological efficiency of the housing sector is characterized by improvement. In the house building fifty-year life cycle, the emergy footprint of the operation and maintenance stage is the largest (75.92%), followed by the construction stage (21.95%), but the emergy footprint intensity of the latter is 4.82 times that of the former. Reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the operation and maintenance stage is the key to reducing the life cycle emergy footprint of house buildings. The ecological impact coefficient of house buildings is negatively exponentially correlated with their service life. It reaches ecological break-even when the service period of the house building is equal to 36.73 years. If the house building is demolished after less than nine years of service, the impact is extremely unfavourable.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
