Performance evaluation of cost effective buildings—A cost, emissions and employment point of view

Given the uphill task of providing housing for all within a short time frame and making it affordable, the construction industry has to look into various low cost options of construction using locally available building materials. This paper evaluates various dimensions of low cost techniques. For the same engineering criterion to be satisfied, a room of dimensions 3.5 m × 3.5 m × 3.14 m constructed using low cost techniques costs only 66% of the conventional construction cost. Since these materials are low energy consuming, the associated CO2 emission is also low. The CO2 emission with the conventional method of construction is 5.88 tonnes compared to 2.42 tonnes in the low cost method of construction. There is a possibility of further reducing the emissions by 23% with 0.03% increase in the cost. Another implicit advantage for a country like India with surplus labour force, is that employment increases with greater use of methods of construction involving reduction in CO2 emission due to the switch towards labour intensive techniques.