A Study on Effectiveness of the Existing CO۲ Mitigation Strategies in the Building Industry

There are many types of energy in the world, being used by the human. With the advancement of science and technology, energy consumers are also expanding. The number of energy sources is limited but the consumers are vast. Fossil fuels, solar, wind, etc. are used in the production of heat, fuel, electricity, etc. In the meantime, energy from fossil fuels is a major contributor to the need for high technology, availability and affordability. These fuels have the disadvantages besides the advantages mentioned above. Today, the negative effects of fossil fuel pollutants threaten the health of human being and environment. The building industry is one of the most energy-intensive sectors in the world, from its construction and operation to the demolition, has allocated a large amount of energy consumption to itself. Meanwhile, carbon emissions from combustion of fossil fuels have become a growing challenge for the international community as one of the most important environmental issues. Increased greenhouse gas emissions due to excessive carbon emissions into the atmosphere cause unprecedented global warming and have irreversible environmental impacts on the whole ecosystem by the world’s climate changing, given the successful works done in the construction industry to reduce carbon emissions, there is a hope that we can reverse the carbon footprint. To achieve this goal, first of all we need to examine the process of carbon reduction in the buildings to identify barriers to achieve totally zero-carbon buildings in order to get a clear understanding of where we are in the way heading towards carbon-negative building strategies which is claimed to be possible but there aren’t enough studies about it yet. So the aim of this article is to locate our current position in the process of reducing carbon emissions in the buildings according to the international planning and agreements.

Keywords:

Carbon Emissions , Low Carbon Buildings (LCB) , net Zero Carbon Buildings (n ZCB) , Zero Carbon Buildings (ZCB) , Carbon-Negative Buildings (CNB)