Sustainable Housing Construction to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Abstract

Global warming is a reality due to the curent level of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Housing construction should take into account factors which contribute to global warming while making the construction affordable in view of the greenhouse gas emissions and the continually increasing energy costs. It is important that housing construction overcomes the irrationality of the current conventional construction method which is not only expensive but has poor thermal performance and ignores the significant environmental impact of high embodied energy of the building process which contributes to the greenhouse gas emissions. Because of this there is a need for developing improved low cost sustainable building techniques. This paper presents an innovative rammed earth core concrete jacket walling system that can provide significant improvements in environmental impact, comfort and cost of both building the house and the cost of operational energy. The construction uses mainly local natural materials with very little high energy processing there by reducing the embodied energy of the construction. Not only using local materials in this construction but also only basic building skills are required for construction workers and therefore the system is ideally suited to rural areas and has potential application to developing countries. This method of construction has better performance in case of earth quakes which saves many lives. The paper presents a discussion of the efficiency of such high thermal mass solutions and describes the construction process.