The contribution of low carbon steel to the decarbonization of the building sector

Abstract

The building sector is responsible for about 40% of carbon emissions, in which about 11% are related to embodied carbon emissions. Therefore, buildings play an important role to the carbon neutrality of the construction sector, and the use of low-carbon materials is an added-value towards this goal. This paper aims to highlight the contribution of low-carbon steel buildings to the reduction of embodied carbon emissions in the building sector. The study entails a comparative life cycle assessment of a steel building using standard carbon steel and a building made of low-carbon steel. The comparative analysis entails the complete life cycle of the building, from the construction stage to the recycling stage, including Module D. As expected, the results show that the low-carbon steel has as a lower impact in the production stage when compared with the standard steel. However, in the end-of-life stage, the result is the opposite as the net credits allocated in Module D are in this case a burden. Nevertheless, in terms of the whole LCA result, the life cycle result of the lowcarbon steel is about 24% lower when compared with the standard carbon steel.