Towards the Lowest-Carbon Home: Exploring the Effects of Building Shape, Size and Material Selection on CO2e Embodied Emission

The embodied emissions of buildings are expected to be limited in European Union (EU) countries; while the energy consumption of buildings is decreasing, their material footprint is becoming more significant. This article presents the results of the analysis of the embodied emissions of single-family houses, depending on their shape features and the types of construction materials used. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), Shapiro–Wilk’s test, the Kruskal–Wallis test, and Classification and Regression Trees (C&RT) are used to analyze a deterministic design-space database comprising over 35 thousand calculated scenarios and rank the importance of the houses’ features. The unit emissions (per square meter, per year) and life-long emissions of the houses are analyzed and discussed, considering the areas of the houses, their shapes, and the materials used for their construction. In planning to limit CO2e embodied emissions, the recommendation to use life-long emissions in building assessments (to achieve better sustainability) is worked out and proved.