Toward Environmentally Sustainable Construction Processes: The U.S. and Canada’s Perspective on Energy Consumption and GHG/CAP Emissions

Changbum Ahn, SangHyun Lee, Feniosky Peña-Mora and Simaan Abourizk
Additional contact information
Changbum Ahn: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 205 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
SangHyun Lee: The Hole School of Construction Engineering, 3-023 Markin/CNRL Natural Resources Engineering Facility, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2W2, Canada
Feniosky Peña-Mora: The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia University, 510 S.W. Mudd Bldg, 500 W. 120th St., New York, NY 10027, USA
Simaan Abourizk: The Hole School of Construction Engineering, 3-023 Markin/CNRL Natural Resources Engineering Facility, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2W2, Canada

Sustainability, 2010, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: In the building and construction sector, most efforts related to sustainable development have concentrated on the environmental performance of the operation of buildings and infrastructure. However, several studies have called for the need to mitigate the considerable environmental impacts, especially air pollutant emissions and energy consumption, generated by construction processes. To provide a point of reference for initiating the development of environmentally sustainable construction processes, this article identifies energy consumption and air emissions resulting from construction activities and examines previous approaches utilized to assess such environmental impact. This research also identifies the opportunities and challenges to mitigate such environmental impact from construction processes, based on the investigation of current technology policies, regulations, incentives, and guidelines.

Keywords: sustainable construction; environmental management; construction processes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/1/354/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/1/354/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:1:p:354-370:d:6887

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().