Embodied Energy Analysis of Building Materials in Thailand: The Quantification and Guideline using Input-Output Analysis Method

Abstract

Over the past decade, a building's life cycle energy analysis (LCEA) has been a focal point of study for many researchers due to the pressing issue of reducing environmental impacts at all stages of a building's life cycle. LCEA consists of `operational energy' (OE) which is the energy required to run the building throughout its life cycle and `embodied energy' (EE) which is the energy used for extraction of raw materials; processing of raw materials; manufacturing of building materials and construction the building. Many energy conservation buildings attempt to reduce the energy by reducing the OE part over the EE part. Due to the reduction of OE, the impact of EE increases and it becomes an important role in LCEA. In Thailand, the current state of EE research suffers from the handling of EE data and the EE calculation guideline. Hence, in this research, EE intensities of building materials were quantified and the guideline of data handling and EE calculation was proposed using the input-output analysis method. From this study, EE intensities of 8 building materials were achieved between 0.54 - 78.75 MJ.kg <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> and the guideline of data collection from Thailand's input-output table and the calculation of energy tariffs and primary energy factor were described. From the correlation between EE intensities (MJ.kg <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> ) and price of building materials (THB.kg <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> ) with r <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> = 0.94 showed that the price of building materials depends on amount of energy use in the process of extraction, processing and manufacturing of building materials. In addition, the EE intensities of building materials which were determined in 2010 and 2015 (recent data), were compared. The numbers show a percentage change from 2 - 69%. The set of EE intensities of building materials and the guideline of input-output analysis method can be applied to calculate the EE of products such as residential buildings in future work.