Sustainable Buildings: An Ever Evolving Target

Yvan Dutil, Daniel Rousse and Guillermo Quesada
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Yvan Dutil: Technologies of Energy and Energy Efficiency (T3E), École de Technologie Supérieure, 201 Boul. Mgr, Bourget, Lévis, QC, G6V 6Z3, Canada
Daniel Rousse: Technologies of Energy and Energy Efficiency (T3E), École de Technologie Supérieure, 201 Boul. Mgr, Bourget, Lévis, QC, G6V 6Z3, Canada
Guillermo Quesada: Technologies of Energy and Energy Efficiency (T3E), École de Technologie Supérieure, 201 Boul. Mgr, Bourget, Lévis, QC, G6V 6Z3, Canada

Sustainability, 2011, vol. 3, issue 2, 1-22

Abstract: Environmental considerations have called for new developments in building technologies to bridge the gap between this need for lower impacts on the environment and ever increasing comfort. These developments were generally directed at the reduction of the energy consumption during operations. While this was indeed a mandatory first step, complete environmental life cycle analysis raises new questions. For instance, for a typical low thermal energy consumption building, the embodied energy of construction materials now becomes an important component of the environmental footprint. In addition, the usual practice in life cycle analysis now appears to call for some adaptation—due to variable parameters in time—to be implemented successfully in building analysis. These issues bring new challenges to reach the goal of integrated design, construction, commissioning, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning of sustainable buildings.

Keywords: sustainable building; passivhaus; life cycle assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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