Energy efficient buildings as a tool for ensuring sustainability in the building industry

The sustainability of our sources of energy has been in the front burner of recent because of the climate change debate - that emissions from fossil fuel based industries are mainly responsible for the greenhouse effect, which has resulted in a change in the global weather pattern. Consequently, various industries including the building industry have adopted energy efficiency measures as a way of prudently using this scarce resource. The building industry is the greatest consumer of energy worldwide, as such any measures taken by the industry to improve energy efficiency in our buildings will have a desirable effect in the reduction of carbon emissions into air. The paper discusses the concept of embodied energy or carbon of building materials as well as the concept of running or operational carbon. It further highlights strategies that could be used by the various stakeholders in the building industry; namely the building materials producers, builders, designers and governments to improve energy efficiency in buildings. It also shows that for the strategies to work, they must be part of a building materials policy for the country in order to achieve an industry wide implementation of the measures, so as to move the country towards sustainable construction by utilising energy efficient building materials.