Estimation of Embodied Energy and Carbon Emissions associated with seismic activities for Reinforced Concrete Building: A Case Study in Iraq

The sustainable building construction in last decade is trending in the world. The construction process of each material used for erection the buildings consumes energy and causes CO2 emissions. The developed countries consider the determination of the energy embodied (EE) in building materials and the related CO2 or carbon emissions (CE) is one of the main aspect in the evaluation of the performance of the buildings. The damages that caused by earthquake and their related repair activities caused a wide range of environmental impacts. These impacts correlated with building construction and repair are typically quantified using environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) procedures that developed by American applied technology council (ATC). FEMA P-58 methodology -which prepared by ATC-applies this procedure in order to estimate environmental impacts of damage and repair using two metrics: carbon emissions CE (in units of kg of carbon dioxide equivalents emitted, CO2e) and embodied energy EE use (in units of Mega Joules, MJ). This paper uses FEMA P-58 to evaluate the embodied energy and the related CO2 emissions of building materials for a case study building in AL-Mustaqbal University College in Al-Hilla City in the middle of Iraq. The study is a continuation of other research papers related to applying the same approach on the same building that the researcher undertook for the purpose of evaluating the performance of the building when exposed to earthquake and calculating the economic and social losses.