Life cycle energy performance of building materials: alternatives for a desert environment

Environmental quality has become increasingly dependent on the use of nonrenewable energy sources in the built environment - as ultimately, buildings are responsible for the bulk of energy consumption in many countries. While recognizing this trend, research into building energy-efficiency has been dominated by attempts to reduce the energy required for a building’s
operation only, while the energy content of building’s materials is often considered as a subordinate issue. Such an approach has led in recent years to strategies which improve a building’s thermal performance, reducing its operational needs for heating and cooling energy, but which rely on high
embodied-energy products. The objective of this study is thus to identify building materials which may potentially optimise a building’s overall life-cycle energy requirements, for a given set of environmental characteristics. Both embodied and operational energy consumption are quantified comparatively for various material compositions in a simple model, which is tested under the arid climatic conditions of the Negev desert in southern Israel. Initial results have suggested that envelope configurations combining soil-cement masonry with exterior insulation appear to be energetically cost-effective, for the provision of thermal comfort in a desert climate with a minimal investment in production energy