Identifying the potential for resource and embodied energy savings within the UK building sector

Abstract

The EU building sector is widely acknowledged as a primary source of anthropogenic emissions, contributing directly to climate change. Recent studies estimate the sector to account for approximately 40% of primary energy use and 50% of extracted materials within the European Union. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/EU requires efficiency improvements to be implemented in all new EU buildings, with a requirement that from 2020 all new buildings constructed should be "nearly energy zero". From this stance the embodied energy of a building, when taking a full life-cycle perspective, is gaining importance and will become a more dominant issue to tackle when striving for sector-wide reduction in the coming years. This research took the UK as a case study and investigated where reduction measures are most suited to reduce material and energy consumption. The study proposes four reduction measures strategically focusing on hotspots of excessive consumption. The findings demonstrate that significant reductions can be achieved for the UK building sector's annual material and embodied energy consumption in the short to midterm, with projections estimating resource and embodied energy savings respectively of 4.7% and 6.4% by 2020 and 9.3% and 28.6% by 2030.