Assessment of the economic benefits from sustainable construction in Greece

The growing awareness of involving the criterion of sustainability in building design imposes questions of economic assessment of the proposed solutions. The aim of this research is to assess the economic benefits of sustainable construction in Greece. A questionnaire posed to 19 experts (consultant engineers, construction managers and contractors) based on the Delphi technique was carried out in order to gather experience on the economic benefits of sustainable construction. In particular, it is more economical at the operation phase of life cycle assessment and sufficiently important to be adopted at the design phase. Among the economic benefits of sustainable construction, reduce energy usage (REU) ranks first, followed by protection of the natural and social environment (NSE) and providing a healthy comfortable living environment (HLE). The results of the study show that the majority of experts believe that sustainable construction is overall more economical than standard practice.