Embodied Energy in building’s environmental impact balance

Since the energy demand for the building functionning had been identified as - and often continues to be - the predominant component of the building's overall energy, increasingly stringent energy standards have adopted wordlwide, and especially in EU in last two decades, targeting to reduce it. Thank to these measures, the energy consumption and related emissions of new and refurbished buildings has been shorted within the European context in the last 20 years. Although the recorded rate of reduction is slower than would be desirable, the available data for EU confirm this trend. However, several studies highlight that the more stringent energy standards lead to enhance the energy performance and reduce the impacts of the building operational phase, while raising instead those relating to materials and components which are required to allow the buildings achieving those benefits. This leads in a consequent increase in Embodied Energy (EE), which is the energy demand due to the production, supply, maintenance and disposal of those elements. If buildings more performing in terms of OE down significantly their energy demand, nevertheless it has been shown thath those benefits are less than it appears when the sole on-duty-efficiency is considered. This because of the energy required to make the building more sober. Therefore, further measures must be taken to prevent the impacts inherent in upstream and downstream-stages of the building processes.