The future development path of low carbon building design

Abstract

Excessive carbon emissions are causing the problems of global warming and greenhouse effect. It is urgent to control carbon emissions worldwide. As one of the main sources, it is crucial to reduce the carbon emits of construction industry. Carbon is generated at all phases of the building life cycle. Notably, building design has various extent of influence on carbon emissions at each phase, which is urgently to explore a low carbon method. This paper is to summarize the current status of building design by literature review. The challenges of building design are analysed as the lack of 1) a comprehensive standard system by considering different factors; 2) the carbon emission calculation method; 3) real-time optimization model aiming at carbon reduction. Therefore, the path of “standard-calculation-prediction-optimization” (SCPO) for building design is proposed. This paper can provide theoretical guidance for low carbon building design.