Strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from residential sector by proposing new building structures in hot and humid climatic conditions

Abstract

Malaysian government has advised builders to apply Industrial Building System (IBS) technique in construction due to so many advantages such as productivity, efficiency and cost. This study attempted to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from building sector by representing two new building compositions into IBS structures categories. Life cycle assessment (LCA) tool Simapro.8 has been used to identify the environmental performance of buildings from cradle to grave. The full LCA has been run to assess the six different types of prefabricated buildings system, of which four are currently recognized and the other two are designed by current research. The primary result shows that timber prefabricate is the best choice due to having lower emissions toward climate change mitigation of building construction. However, timber houses have rarely been built due to some defects that occurred to its material and structure over time. Rate of applying wood in the construction industry in Malaysia has gone down from about 60% to 7% over the last 40 years. Therefore, this research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge by introducing new composite. First composite is Glued laminated timber (GLT) with steel stud and the second is a combination of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) with steel stud as two new compositions which not only have significantly less global warming potential (GWP) than prefabricated concrete structure or steel framing system, but can be replaced rather than abandoned timber structure. Therefore, new compositions can be suggested to house builders and facilitate the decision making process.