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