Construction Industry in Causing and Reducing Global Warming

Lau, Pei Wen (2011) Construction Industry in Causing and Reducing Global Warming. Final Year Project (Other), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Global warming has become one of the growing concerns for most of the country. Global warming is the rise of earth’s temperature and the forming of it is due to emission of Green House Gases (GHGs). Besides, greenhouse effect is a phenomenon whereby heat from sunlight and lighting is being trapped in earth’s atmosphere due to CO2. In order to study the topic more thoroughly, three objectives have been set. The first objective is to study the factors in which construction industry had caused global warming. Second objective is to determine the role of government in setting rules and regulations to reduce global warming. The third objective is to establish efforts that have been made to reduce global warming. A study into GHGs or CO2 emission from the building itself or during the construction stage will be studied through literature review. Activities related to construction industry such as construction, occupying and maintenance of the building release CO2. There are 30% to 55% of CO2 emission in certain country is caused by construction industry. Besides, study on rules and regulations regarding global warming been conducted. Examples of such are Kyoto Protocol, Building Regulations, Climate Change Act 2008 and many others. All those rules and regulations really helped in reducing global warming. In addition, a case study of a Green Energy Building (GEO) had been conducted. The sustainable design of GEO such as thermowall, orientation, cooling system and so on has leads to low energy consumption of only 30 kWh/m2/year. Interviews have been conducted with the project officer, assistant project manager and energy consultant that were involved during construction of GEO for data analysis. This interviews show that a lot of efforts have been done to construct GEO and it can be serve as a method to reduce global warming.