Descrição
Since the large scale industrialization occurred, the profit oriented human activity has led to a
constantly growing environmental degradation. Nowadays, that the actual severity of the problem
in hand is impossible to ignore and the spectrum of the future consequences emerges in its
full extent, several actions towards the adaptation of sustainability principles in the most problematic
sectors of human activity are undertaken. One of these sectors is building sector, incorporating
the production, transport, use and replacement of building materials, the use of the
building itself (energy consumption for lighting, ventilation, heating and cooling, water consumption
etc), the reuse of the building or its materials, the demolition of the building and the
disposal of the demolition products. The energy consumed in operating buildings serves as indication
of the building sector’s contribution to the total environmental aggravation induced by
human activity. According to (OECD, 2003), in the European OECD countries, the building
sector consumes the highest amount of energy (40%) in comparison to the transport (22%) and
industry sectors (38%). Given the fact that the afore-mentioned quantities include the energy
amounts consumed only for the operation of the building, while other processes – unbreakably
bonded to construction – such as manufacture and transport of building materials, are not cocalculated,
an estimation regarding the impact of the building sector on the environment can be
drawn.
; Bragança, L. 
