More than 6 billion square metres of new buildings are built each year. This is about 1.2 million buildings. If we translate these figures into carbon footprint (CF) generated during the construction, it will be approximately 3.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide. The contractors all over the world – also in Poland – decide to calculate the carbon footprint for various reasons, but mostly they are compelled to do so by the market. The analysis of costs and emissions of greenhouse gases for individual phases of the construction system allows implementing solutions and preventing a negative impact on the environment without increasing the construction costs. The share of each phase in the amount of produced carbon for construction and use of the building depends mainly on the used materials and applied design solutions. Hence, the materials and solutions with lesser carbon footprint should be used. It can be achieved by using natural materials or materials which do not need much energy to be produced. The author will attempt to outline this idea and present examples of integrated analysis of costs and amount of carbon footprint during the building lifecycle.

The analysis of the costs and emissions of greenhouse gases for individual phases of construction investments allows for the implementation of solutions and the prevention of negative environmental impacts without significantly increasing construction costs. The share of individual investment phases in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced for the construction and use of buildings depends mainly on the materials used and the implemented design solutions. In accordance with the idea of sustainable construction, materials and design solutions with the lowest possible carbon footprint should be used. This can be achieved by using natural building materials, materials subjected to appropriate chemical composition modifications, or materials in which their production does not require large amounts of energy. The aim of the article is to determine the value of the purchase costs of selected road materials (concrete paving blocks, cement-sand bedding, concrete curbs, semi-dry concrete and concrete underlay, washed sand, and crushed aggregate with a fraction of 0–31.5 mm) for the implementation of a road investment. In addition, the authors focused on determining the size of the embodied carbon footprint due to GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and GHG removals in a product system, expressed as CO2 equivalents for the same materials that were subjected to cost analyzes. The article presents the results of original analyzes, and indicates the optimal solutions in terms of minimizing the cost of purchasing road materials and minimizing the carbon footprint. The discussion also covers the issue of changing the chemical composition in the context of the potential impact on the reduction of material costs and CO2 equivalent emissions.

The main goal of the studies was to collect information on the impact of the identified risk factors on the amount of costs incurred in the life cycle of buildings. The own studies were focused especially on residential and non-residential buildings. The studies consisted in obtaining expert opinions on the subject of the research involves in the non-random (arbitrary) selection of a sample of respondents from among specialists corresponding to the industry purpose of the studies and the research material. The research used the expert questionnaire method. The studies were divided into three stages. In the first stage, the identification and division of risk factors in the life cycle of buildings was performed. Then, experts assessed 45 selected risk factors that may affect the amount of costs incurred in the life cycle of buildings. In the last step, the research results were developed in the form of a checklist knowledge base, containing information about the potential impact of the identified risk factors in the life cycle of buildings on the amount of the corresponding components of life cycle costs.