Resource use and environmental emissions of US construction sectors

Reducing the environmental effects of construction is a continuing professi onal and social concern to promote sustainable development, in this paper, we estimate the major commodity and service inputs, resource requirements, and environmental emissions and wastes for four major U.S. construction sec tors as defined by the Department of Commerce: (1) highway, bridge, and oth er horizontal construction [0.6% of the 1992 U.S. gross domestic product (G DP)]; (2) industrial facilities and commercial and office buildings (1.58 o f GDP); (3) residential one-unit buildings (1.9% of GDP); and (4) other con struction (towers, water, sewer and irrigation systems, railroads, etc.) (2 .44 of GDP). Our estimates include the entire supply chain of material, ene rgy, and service suppliers for these sectors with the use of a detailed 199 2 input-output model of the U.S, economy and publicly available environment al data. We find that in general, the four major U.S, construction sectors appear to use fewer resources and have lower rates of environmental emissio ns and wastes than their share of the GDP might suggest.