Low embodied energy sustainable building materials and technologies

Construction industry is one of the largest consumers of the natural resources and responsible for substantial amount of CO2 emission in the world. The purpose of this paper is to carry out comprehensive literature review on the low embodied energy materials and techniques used in the existing and / or new buildings in India. The paper also compares the conventional building materials and techniques, with alternative ones to assess their superiority. An investigation into the energy consumed by the building materials and techniques is computed to find out the embodied energy requirements to prove superiority of innovative construction techniques over traditional materials. © (2015) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.