Global Temperature Change Potential of the Indian Construction Industry

Emissions of carbon dioxide leads to global warming, causing sea level rise, intense floods and other climate related impacts. India is one of the fastest growing economy that contributes third largest emissions of CO₂; moreover, the emissions are increasing from across the sectors. Energy production and industrial manufacturing are one of the highest emitting sectors in the country. In 2015, construction raw materials such as cement, steel and bricks contributed around 11% of the country's total emissions, which is further expected to increase. Therefore it is important to understand the temperature change potential of the industry for policy decision of the sector. In this study, production technology, energy efficiency of technology and emission factors of each raw material individually have been undertaken in bottom-up approach to estimate the cumulative emissions from 1990 to 2015. Along with which, Absolute Global Temperature change Potential (AGTP) of carbon dioxide (at 6.84 x 10^-16 k/kg) is used to estimate the temperature change potential of the industry. Results suggests that the construction raw materials caused increase in 1.01 mK cumulative temperature change from 1990 up to 2015. The future impact of construction raw materials is likely to aggravate the temperature further with the increased demand for construction in India.