Reduced-Carbon Envelope Systems for More Sustainable Industrial Properties: A Cost Analysis of Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Abstract

Building operations and the construction industry account for 49% of global carbon emissions. Although different approaches have tried to lower the emissions of building operations, there have not been many initiatives to reduce the carbon emitted in construction. Currently, the embodied carbon of buildings in construction is lower than the operational carbon over their useful life. Nevertheless, if not enough attention is directed toward making the construction industry more sustainable, embodied carbon is expected to become the largest environmental hazard in real estate.

Driven by growth in e-commerce and international problems with supply chains, industrial buildings have experienced the largest increase in demand the past few years compared to other property types. Yet, initiatives to make construction systems for industrial buildings more sustainable are not well developed, and thus these initiatives are not commonly used or known.

This report aims to analyze reduced-carbon materials and systems currently used in industrial construction. A comparison of carbon emissions and prices will be studied to set costs for every ton of CO₂ not released into the environment. The report will apply a case study to approximate a real-life scenario and thus attempt to understand how much more expensive it is to build reduced-carbon industrial structures. The goal of this thesis is to understand how clear the path to a much needed more sustainable industrial building market is.