The Construction Evolution and Their Energectic Impact in Andean Region Buildings

Abstract

The constant growth of the building sector has had a deleterious environmental impact across the world. Technological advances, the use of new materials and the replacement of traditional construction systems with industrialized ones have resulted in significant growth in the Total Embodied Energy of buildings in Latin American countries. In the last few decades, Ecuador and its four geographic regions too have experienced this change. In this context, this study focuses on analyzing the change in construction systems in the Andean region of Ecuador from 1980 to 2020, and studying the impact that this change has had on the Total Embodied Energy of residential buildings. The first part of this study provides a detailed conceptual framework of the subject of this study, and discusses the importance of energy, and its production and consumption, in Ecuador in the last decades. The second part analyses the changes in construction systems that this region has witnessed according to national censuses. This information is contrasted in the results section where 40 houses built in the period of analysis in the city of Cuenca-Ecuador are analysed. The growth of embodied energy in dwellings in this region in recent decades has been 2.15 times. Within this increase, the most significant component has been the Structure, followed by the Envelope and the Finishes. Finally, the results show that the changes in materials used have had consequences not only at the environmental level, but also for the thermal mass of the Envelope, which can affect the interior behavior of the building.