sustainable buildings an ever evolving target可持续建筑不断演进的目标.pdf

Sustainability 2011, 3, 443-464; doi:10.3390/su3020443 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 /journal/sustainability Review Sustainable Buildings: An Ever Evolving Target Yvan Dutil *, Daniel Rousse and Guillermo Quesada Technologies of Energy and Energy Efficiency (T3E), École de Technologie Supérieure, 201 Boul. Mgr, Bourget, Lévis, QC, G6V 6Z3, Canada; E-Mails: daniel@ (D.R.); guillermo@ (G.Q.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: yvan@; Tel.: +1-418-835-2110; +1-418-823-2112. Received: 3 December 2010; in revised form: 24 January 2011 / Accepted: 26 January 2011 / Published: 16 February 2011 Abstract: Environmental considerations have called for new developments in building technologies to bridge the gap between this need for lower impacts on the environment and ever increasing comfort. These developments were generally directed at the reduction of the energy consumption during operations. While this was indeed a mandatory first step, complete environmental life cycle analysis raises new questions. For instance, for a typical low thermal energy consumption building, the embodied energy of construction materials now becomes an important component of the environmental footprint. In addition, the usual practice in life cycle analysis now appears to call for some adaptation—due to variable parameters in time—to be implemented successfully in building analysis. These issues bring new challenges to reach the goal of integrate