Environmental impacts of building structures in Taiwan

Environmental quality has become increasingly influenced by the built environment and buildings play an important role in energy consumption and CO2 emissions through phases of life cycle. This paper evaluates environmental impacts of reinforced concrete structure, steel structure and wood structure in terms of embodied energy and CO2 emissions of building materials in Taiwan. Environmental burdens of materials from cradle to gate including long transportation factor are taken into analysis since a great amount of wood is imported from the North America and ore of steel is imported from the West of Australia to Taiwan. The results show that wood structure has great benefits for the built environment in Taiwan.