De-carbonizing the Nigerian Housing Sector: The Role of Life Cycle CO2 Assessment

Ezema, I. C. and Opoko, Pearl Akunnaya and Oluwatayo, A. A. (2016) De-carbonizing the Nigerian Housing Sector: The Role of Life Cycle CO2 Assessment. International Journal of Applied Environmental Sciences , 11 (1). pp. 325-349. ISSN 0973-6077

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Abstract

Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important chemical compound in the climate change process as it is the main causative agent of global warming and climate change. International efforts aimed at arresting climate change are all directed at carbon elimination or reduction. Buildings especially residential buildings have been found to contribute substantially to climate change through the carbon emitted to the environment in the process of building procurement and use. This paper aims at tracking the CO2 content of the various activities and processes involved in building procurement and use in a Nigerian context with a view to indentifying the target areas for decarbonization. This is done by applying the life cycle CO2 assessment (LCCO2A) approach to a typical urban residential apartment building in Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and urbanized city. In this respect, the ICE database and the activity based method were used to estimate the embodied and operational CO2 emissions associated with the case building. The study found that the embodied and operational emissions were significant when compared with baseline scenarios in other countries. Hence the paper concluded that de-carbonization strategies should be targeted at both the embodied and operational carbon emissions of buildings. The best result will be achieved if the de-carbonization efforts are combined with natural and active carbon sinks that exist in the study context

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
Depositing User:	Adedapo Oluwatayo
Date Deposited:	03 Feb 2017 09:50
Last Modified:	03 Feb 2017 09:50
URI:	http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/7707

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