Environmental Performance Enters Construction Materials
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exhibiting little or no degradation in performance up to about 200°F (93°C).
Conclusions
Many opportunities are available for materials advances to reduce the energy use and atmospheric emissions associated with the building sector. The energy and cost performance of walls, roofs, windows, mechanical systems, and on-site renewable electrical and thermal systems can all be improved through advances in materials. Specifically, materials that improve the performance of thermal insulation, thermal storage, vapor retarders, weather barriers, glazings, solar thermal collectors, and photovoltaic generators could all have a profound impact on the overall energy efficiency and sustainability of buildings. Buildings have a relatively long lifecycle compared to automobiles and most manufactured products, so materials for buildings must be highly durable, nontoxic, aesthetically pleasing, and comfortable and safe for human interactions. Materials that reduce energy use in both new construction and retrofitting and refurbishment projects are needed. A challenge for building scientists and materials scientists is the difficulty of assigning a quantitative energy savings value to any given materials improvement. The elements of a building are highly interactive in their energy performance and also dependent on the surrounding climate, building type, and usage patterns in the building. Building scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have begun to develop sophisticated computer tools to address this issue, and those tools will improve as computer power increases. Because buildings are so numerous, even relatively small energy reductions on an individual-building basis can have a large impact globally.
References
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