Integrated carbon emission management for the United Arab Emirates construction industry
Abstract
Awareness of sustainable building construction and its benefits is growing in the United
Arab Emirates (UAE), to safeguard the interests of future generations. Although there is
a wide range of sustainable building standards and assessment tools available, the
application of Carbon Emissions management (CEM) in building projects is still less.
This research provides an Integrated CEM framework to increase the environmental
efficiency of building projects by estimating, monitoring and controlling the Embodied
carbon emissions during the Tendering and construction stages.
This research interprets the related literature and uses opinion of green building experts,
through surveys to gather data on sustainable construction practices in the UAE. The
approach also analyses the preferences and challenges of the UAE construction industry
with current sustainable practices such as environmental performance evaluation,
standards, tendering methods, rating tools and software used. It identifies the need for
enhancing the environmental efficiency of buildings through an integrated CEM
framework. It also performs two in-depth case-studies to practically test the CEM Model
and conducted a focus group to validate the proposed Integrated CEM framework.
Emphasis on Operational carbon emissions, prevalence of low-cost-bid-award criteria,
Lack of awareness on CEM, unavailability of standard common-unit-of-measure and
complexity of existing carbon estimation tools makes CEM very challenging. The
proposed Integrated CEM framework addresses the challenges through a rigorous
selection of contractors based on cost and carbon emissions as criteria, quantification of
carbon emissions of project activities, and then to monitor and control the emissions
during the construction stage. The research finds that Carbon Emissions, time and cost
can be integrated into a framework with use of Earned Value analysis and simple in use
tools, to provide a holistic evaluation of environmental efficiency in building
construction. Findings include that the Construction industry can apply the Integrated
CEM Framework and associated models in real-life practices without the requirement of
additional software or processes.
Finally, this research found that the implementation rate for CEM will increase through
the use of a proposed Integrated CEM framework which includes the carbon
cost(COCO2) tendering Model, Carbon Emissions Estimation Model(CE-EM) and
Carbon emissions control and monitoring model(CE-MCM). The methodology and CEM framework, while geared toward the UAE construction industry, excel and Primavera;
can be easily adapted to other countries and software.
The integrated CEM framework will assist contractors, consultants and clients in making
informed decisions about the carbon emissions in the UAE. It also promotes a proactive,
environmentally conscious construction approach to enhance sustainable performance.
The research suggests the use of CO2e as a unit of measure for accounting to give
visibility to carbon emission management in addressing the impacts of climate change.