Various eco-friendly materials are used in the construction industry. South Korea employs the Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design (G-SEED), a green building certification system, in which materials account for 11% of the evaluation criteria. However, data for each eco-friendly material are managed individually by different institutions, causing inefficiency, increased costs, and potentially greater environmental impacts associated with material and resource selection. Hence, this study develops a green building materials integrated platform (GIP) that collates information on eco-friendly materials across different industries in South Korea, to support the G-SEED evaluations. Guidelines and standards related to each evaluation item were analyzed and used to compile a green building materials database. The database includes 12,636 data points representing product prices and environmental impact data. This database was used to develop the four-level Excel-based GIP. Case studies were conducted on actual G-SEED buildings to analyze the economic efficiency and environmental performance achieved by using alternative materials to those recommended by the GIP. Case 1 exhibits improvements in economic efficiency and environmental performance of 17% and 10%, respectively, whereas Case 2 exhibits improvements of 8% and 21%, respectively. Thus, both case studies boast superior combinations of green building materials compared to existing alternatives.

There is an increasing interest in new renewable energy sources for achieving net zero emissions. Consequently, the construction industry has mandated zero-energy building certification (ZEB), through the usage of new renewable energy. However, because of the variations in the energy self-sufficiency rate (ESR) among the new renewable energy types, incorrect ESR prediction at the design stage may lead to problems. Hence, in this study, the ESR and construction cost are analyzed for each new renewable energy capacity to predict the ESR of photovoltaic (PV), building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV), geothermal, and fuel cell systems. Passive and active technology elements of the ZEB cases in Korea are analyzed, and by establishing a standard model with the average value of each case, the ESR is calculated for each new renewable energy capacity, and the calculation formulas are derived. The results indicate that for the PV and BIPV systems, the rate of ESR increases with the capacity (kWp) and is constant at 0.54% and 0.34%, respectively. However, for the geothermal system and fuel cells, the average ESR is 0.016% and 1.46%, respectively, but as the rate of ESR increase with the capacity (kW) gradually decreases, the calculation formulas are derived with a log graph.