Development of low carbon durability design for green apartment buildings in South Korea

Abstract

A number of studies have evaluated life-cycle CO2 emissions and related emission-reduction technologies that can contribute towards a low carbon construction industry; specific attention has also been paid to apartment buildings. There has also been much focus on long-life building technologies as a major means to reduce carbon emissions from the construction industry. These developments are accompanied by a need to develop models for quantitative evaluation of building service life and of life-cycle CO2 emissions. This study thus aims to evaluate service life and life-cycle CO2 emission reductions, and to develop a low carbon durability design for apartment buildings, utilizing green technologies to satisfy these twin goals.

To this end, three types of green technology groups that could be applied to apartment buildings were selected. Furthermore, a method to estimate the service life of apartment buildings was applied to evaluation measures of CO2 emissions, in order to identify evaluation measures for CO2 emission reduction performance and service life. The life cycle of apartment buildings was divided into four phases: construction, operation, maintenance, and disposal phases, with CO2 emission evaluation measures considered for each phase.

A case study was also analyzed in order to validate the reliability of the proposed low carbon durability design. The study result showed that it is possible to analyze the characteristics of life-cycle CO2 emission reductions and the service life of apartment buildings using green technologies; 36 technologies capable of satisfying the 40% life-cycle CO2 emission reductions target and the 100-year service life target were selected.