According to Karl Weidlinger, CEO of the Swietelsky construction group, two percent of a building’s CO2 emissions are made up of planning, construction costs 17 percent, ongoing operation 75 percent and three percent demolition costs. The first approach is therefore to reduce the heating requirement, says Weidlinger. Yesterday the construction company held a “Festival of Ideas” in the Linz Design Center. The contribution of the construction industry to climate change was also discussed.
Experts listed starting points: The head of the Austrian Ecology Institute, Robert Lechner, named the excessive consumption of living space as the most urgent problem. “In the 1990s we had 33 square meters of living space, today we are at 45.”
However, according to Lechner, the most important lever is planning. “Sustainability is usually introduced too late – and then it gets expensive.” More ecological building fails – especially in the case of publicly advertised buildings – also due to the additional costs at the beginning. “It pays off over a lifetime. Private clients are more accessible,” says Peter Gal, Swietelsky board member.
According to Gal, the most important and ecological thing is to avoid waste in construction. The Viennese means that builders and architects are demanding major changes while the construction sites are under construction. That makes construction more expensive and resource-intensive. A solution could be a so-called digital building twin, which would mirror a project digitally and enable earlier intervention.
The small-scale domestic industry structure, especially among planners, would not promote the necessary professionalization, says Christian Peer, who works in the future laboratory at the Technical University in Vienna. In Switzerland and Germany there are more large planning offices that are more advanced in digitization.
Computer-aided planning should have been the EU-wide standard for years. In practice, however, advertisers would not attach importance to this, says Gal. In addition, there are standards for everything in construction – but not for the planning programs. As before, programs for building technology and construction would not go together.
Another point is the emission-free construction site itself. Gal: “It’s not a problem to run the machines electrically for one day, the problem is charging.” Technical developments also play a role: for example, sensor-controlled dredging processes, with which excavation pits can be carried out more precisely and thus more energy-efficiently.
A look at the climate balance shows that the construction industry needs to take action to reduce emissions: Including “grey energy” – the energy-intensive preliminary work of the cement and steel industry – construction is responsible for more than 35 percent of the CO2 load, according to Lechner. (sib)
Source: Nachrichten
