A holistic review of research on carbon emissions of green building construction industry

Abstract

Purpose Addressing global warming challenge, carbon emissions reduction potential of the construction industry has received additional attentions. The decoupling of construction industry and carbon emissions through policies, technologies and model innovations is an effective way for reducing environmental pollution and achieve eco-urban target. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Within the scope of green building carbon emissions (GB-CO2) research, a large number of scientific literature has been published in construction discipline over the past few decades. However, it seems that a systematic summary of strategies, techniques, models and scientific discussion of future direction of GB-CO2 is lacking. Therefore, this paper carries out data mining on authoritative journals, identified the key research topics, active research areas and further research trends through visualization studies. Findings This study contributes to the body of knowledge in GB-CO2 by critically reviewing and summarizing: professional high-quality journals have a greater influence in the scope of research, developed countries and developing countries are all very concerned about sustainable buildings, and the current hot topics of research focus on the application of the life cycle models, energy efficiency, environmental performance of concrete material, etc. Moreover, further research areas that could expand the knowledge of cross-national long-term carbon mechanisms, develop comprehensive life cycle carbon emissions assessment models, build technical standards and tests for the sustainable building material and systems, and exploit multi-objective decision models considering decarbonizing design and renewable energy. Originality/value This study is of value in systematic insight the state-of-the-art of GB-CO2 research in the more recent decade. A more vividly and effectively method is documented in extending the traditional bibliometric review to a deeper discussion. This study can also benefit construction practitioners by providing them a focused perspective of strategy and technologies innovations for emerging practices in green building projects.

Optimal Transportation Scheduling of Prefabricated Components Based on Improved Hybrid Differential Firefly Algorithm

“…rough proper planning of the transport vehicles, the problem can be described as passing through the loading and unloading points in a certain order on the premise of meeting a series of constraints (load, demand, transportation time, etc.) and achieve certain goals, such as the minimum or maximum distance, time, and cost [15,21]. In an actual transportation process, the distribution of several goods needs to have specific time requirements to complete the transportation service between the earliest and latest time specified by customers, thus forming a time window [22,23].…”

“…According to the annual report released by the European Environment Agency, 72% of the energy consumption of the global transportation sector comes from road vehicles [13,14]. erefore, ways to reduce transportation energy consumption in the process of component transportation are a significantly important role in the development of "green buildings" [15,16]. e prefabricated components for the prefabricated buildings must be produced in strict accordance with the production plan [17].…”

Green Innovation at the industrial level: A systematic Review

“…In the construction industry the green innovation can be a potencial sector with ability to lead the process sustainables and thus be a pioneer in sustainable development [26]. For example, green roofs have been used by humanity since ancient times, because people lacked the usual building materials, such as stone and wood, and the means to make bricks and tiles; currently some buildings and homes use them but it should be more used due to the great benefits that it generates to both human beings in their lives and the reduction of greenhouse gases to the environment [24] the importance of creating ecological buildings in order to reduce carbon emissions and the energy they consume, green innovation is applied to the design and use of suitable materials to make this industry friendlier to the environment and provide better quality of life to human beings [5].…”

“…with the increase in the potential for the consumption of global natural resources, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have been produced that have generated a series of problems, such as environmental damage in oceans and rivers, perforation of the ozone layer, increased climate change and global warming [4]. The construction group consume more than 40% of total global energy and is demonstrated by more the 40% of global GHG emissions that are constantly emitted [5] and nowadays this number only falls to around 32% [6]. This has raised great public concern and people are increasingly alert to the importance of concept and application of green innovation in the construction industries and in other fields where it is applicable in relation to large industries [7].…”

Environmental impacts cost assessment model of residential building using an artificial neural network

“…Buildings have a significant impact on the natural environment, and they account for a significant proportion of global warming due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Alrashed and Asif, 2014;Ingrao et al, 2018). It has been reported that the built environment consumes 40% of worldwide energy and is responsible for one-third of the GHGs, which cause carbon emissions (Ching and Shapiro, 2014;Lu et al, 2020). In Saudi Arabia, buildings consume about 80% of total electrical energy at the national level during the operational phase.…”