Canadian construction is doing more work with less fuel, resulting in reduced energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions over the last 17 years, according to a new scientific review.
Environment
Canadian construction is doing more work with less fuel, resulting in reduced energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions over the last 17 years, according to a new scientific review.
Between 1990 and 2007, construction industry energy consumption and CO2 emissions decreased by seven per cent and six per cent respectively, according to the review prepared by the Canadian Industrial Energy End-use Data and Analysis Centre (CIEEDAC) at Simon Fraser University.
During that same period, gross output increased by 54 per cent and gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 51 per cent, respectively.
“Construction has been moving away from light and heavy oils towards natural gas. Also, diesel use has been relatively constant at 60 per cent of its total energy consumption,” explains John Nyboer, executive director of CIEEDAC.
“The industry appears to be doing more with a little less.”
The energy consumption review was prepared for the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) and Canadian Industry Program for Energy Conservation. Trends in energy and greenhouse gas emissions and weaknesses in the data available about construction production were explored in the review.
“Though construction has moved away from some of the dirty fuels, we do not know what the electricity use looks like and whether it has been really good or not,” explains Nyboer.
“It is a little fuzzy — there is a shift away from heavy fuels, though it has been minor, and it is probably therefore an improvement in efficiency. The trucks of today are likely more efficient than those in 1990 — the efficiencies have improved.”
Exploring how electricity is used on a construction project could be done by having a project site metered separately in order to record how much electricity is used on the project.
A critique of a crew on such a site could then determine that “to construct 47 homes it took this much electricity,” says Nyboer.
Energy and CO2 intensity indicators were calculated using both gross output and GDP as denominators. Since these are economic output indicators, they can be influenced by unrelated factors, which needs to be kept in mind, says Nyboer.
Because construction is so diverse in nature, there is no consistent physical measure of output which exists and is accepted to allow for more reliable energy and CO2 intensity calculations.
“The problem with using economic measures is that the relationship between economics and energy is not always direct, influences on the economic number do not always effect the energy number, so you cannot always say ‘yes we improved our efficiency’ to where it was,” explains Nyboer.
“Maybe there was an increase or decrease in highway construction one year. There are all sorts of things that may have changed over the period of the analysis that could have effected how the energy is being used.”
Bill Ferreira, director of government relations and public affairs at CCA, says the review’s findings are interesting considering construction equipment fleets are starting to see more energy efficiency, especially with newer diesel engines.
“It is reassuring and interesting to see that the industry is moving in the right direction,” says Ferreira.
CCA has pressed the federal government in the past for an accelerated capital cost allowance that would give construction firms the ability to renew their older equipment more quickly, and replace it with more energy-efficient equipment.
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