Carbon Positive Residential Development Through Low Carbon Materials
[Thesis developed in collaboration with USD]
The carbon emission and energy consumption of building sector makes it a least sustainable industry in the world. The residential sector is responsible for 70% of total energy consumption and 60% of total carbon emission by the buildings in UK. The concern of carbon emission from residential sector is increasing with time because of the urbanisation rate and England’s vision to provide 3 lacs homes/ year till 2030, which becomes a threat to UK’s future target for net zero carbon emission. This report aims to tackle a high carbon emission issue from the residential sector and make the future development extremely sustainable and carbon friendly. This report identifies the major carbon emitting building life cycle stages and tries to reduce it by replacing traditional materials to natural ones and adopting energy efficient standards from LETI. This study intends to build a carbon positive building, which would not only sequester their own carbon emission, but also absorb more from the atmosphere. This study would explore low carbon materials and their applicability in the building elements according to various market demand. This report will create four different construction type of lowest carbon, cost effective, quickest and most durable to increase the feasibility of the study, which will be applied to the basic residential block, proposed by this report. The whole life carbon assessment of the proposed residential block represents that, all the construction types have sequestered 1.5 times more carbon than it generates throughout their life cycle and achieved more than 150% carbon reduction than typical construction in UK. The assessment has also demonstrated that, the scope of this report would target the upcoming residential development to follow this study in order to design carbon positive building, which would not only offset their own carbon emission, but also absorb from the atmosphere to make healthier environment to live in.
