Sustainable Construction
Cement is vital to the UK’s built
environment. It is an essential ingredient in concrete,
without which no school, house, hospital, road or bridge would be
built. Cement based materials are also used for the remediation of
contaminated land. Thanks to this practice, brownfield sites
can be safely developed without necessarily having to send
contaminated soil to landfill.
The cement and concrete industries are working
jointly, within the UK Concrete Platform, to promote and enhance
other benefits of the use of cement and concrete to achieve a more
sustainable built environment.
SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS
Ninety percent of the environmental impact of
CO2 associated with buildings arises during their
operation lifetime from heating, cooling and lighting.
Concrete buildings are more adaptable to future climates as they
have the ability to absorb and release heat, which means that less
energy is needed for heating or cooling, thus saving energy over
their lifetime.
Working with The Concrete Centre, the BCA has
a joint research programme on the sustainable advantages of
concrete. This covers the development of demonstration projects and
best practice in construction that enable most benefits from the
thermal mass properties of concrete and climate change adaptation
of concrete construction to be achieved.
THERMAL MASS
The Concrete Centre and the BCA have published
guidance on how to utilise thermal mass to reduce operational
CO2 emissions. In 2005, ARUP Research and Development
was commissioned by The Concrete Centre to undertake research into
the whole-life CO2 emissions from UK dwellings
The study evaluated and contrasted the operational and embodied
CO2 impacts across the 21st century from
dwellings with high and low levels of thermal mass. The
research was completed in 2006 and a key conclusion was that the
difference in embodied CO2 between a typical
concrete/masonry house and timber frame house is very small at
around 4%, and can be offset through the effective use of thermal
mass in around 11 years. Most of the CO2 savings
were derived from the used of thermal mass to capture solar gains
during the heating season, which reduces the amount of fuel
required. As temperatures are forecast to rise in the coming years,
the research also found increasing CO2 savings in the
masonry/concrete dwelling through the use of thermal mass to reduce
or avoid the need for air-conditioning.
The BCA continues to work with The Concrete
Centre and the design and construction industries to promote
low-carbon, long-life dwellings, offices and other buildings that
can adapt to a changing climate through the effective use of cement
and concrete. The BCA is also seeking to influence building
regulations and is promoting to government and academia the use of
whole-life approach to evaluate the sustainability of concrete over
the building lifetime.