Abstract
As worldwide consumption of materials continues to rise, there is growing pressure on material, energy and water resources and an increase in waste production and greenhouse gas emissions. A much more sustainable approach to the procurement of built assets is crucial to avoid exacerbating existing environmental pressures. Product and process-based environmental data is an important element in understanding how current and future built assets perform. This paper analyses environmental flow data for a range of construction materials contained within the Environmental Performance in Construction (EPiC) Database, a new, open access repository of hybrid environmental flow coefficients for construction materials. The structural paths of 131 construction materials are analysed to identify trends and contributors to embodied water, energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions coefficients. The disaggregation and analysis of material coefficients shows the complexity of the material supply chains and provides insight into the key inputs and outputs resulting from the production of construction materials.
Highlights
As the world struggles to remain within a rise of 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels, buildings and infrastructure continue to place a considerable burden on the natural environment
This study examines the Environmental Performance in Construction (EPiC) Database, a new open access life cycle inventories (LCI) repository of hybrid embodied environmental flow coefficients for construction materials
Research method This study examines the structural paths of 131 construction materials contained within the EPiC Database across three environmental flows: energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water. 153 materials have been excluded from this study, as they represent minor variations to the primary materials
Summary
As the world struggles to remain within a rise of 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels, buildings and infrastructure continue to place a considerable burden on the natural environment. Aim and scope The aim of this study was to explore the system boundaries, limitations, and complexity of the supply chains of the materials contained within the EPiC Database This provides insight into the inputs and outputs resulting from the production of construction materials, illustrating how analyses of structural paths can be used to identify and potentially prioritise improvement efforts for resource or emissions intensive processes. The compilation of hybrid coefficients is based on two structural path analyses (SPA) [6]; the first conducted on the 114 sectors contained within an Australian EEIO model for 2014-15 and the second conducted on process data representative of each material from the AusLCI shadow database [7, 8]. The data demonstrates the significance of material inputs across all categories except one
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