embodied energy research in irish buildings

Embodied energy represents all the energy expended in constructing a building including materials’ extraction, transport, fabrication, construction and may deal with maintenance and eventual disposal. It is often overlooked during the design process despite accounting for between 10 and 20 times annual operational energy use. Better design standards are reducing operational energy requirements so that embodied energy is now becoming a key design issue.

Currently there is little information available to designers on the embodied energies of buildings. The objective of this project is to develop a novel embodied energy database and an innovative decision process which will enable building designers to evaluate the embodied energies of their designs. The feasibility of a novel, dynamic, web-based information database will also be investigated.

The outcomes from this project may be used to improve the embodied energy-efficiency design of buildings, create internationally-marketable expertise in the Irish design industry and assist Irish manufacturers in this emerging area.

Personnel

DIT - School of Civil & Building Services Engineering
Adolf Acquaye
Dr Aidan Duffy

Collaboration:
Trinity College Dublin - Prof Biswajit Basu
Arup Consulting Engineers