During the recent years followed by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), most of
business and industries around the globe have been hardly hit to the limit that it still struggling
to survive, suffering from the crisis financial consequences. For instance, in the construction
industry; many construction projects have been suspended or totally cancelled. Nevertheless,
among this dilemma, a call has been raised to use the sustainable practices to mitigate the
effects of the GFC on construction industry.
For the first look, it seems that there is contradiction since the sustainable solutions are often
associated with an increase in the initial cost, undoubtedly, the sustainable practices have many
advantages in both economic and environment aspects, however, the question which needs to
be addressed here is, to what extent using such sustainable practices can mitigate the negative
effects of the economic downturn on construction industry.
Therefore, it is a challenging argument for using such sustainable construction from its economic
perspective, however, this paper is aiming to present the economical benefits of sustainable
practices in construction industry, and trying to clear the doubt of the high initial costs of the
sustainable construction through studying the life cycle benefit of green building.
Keywords: sustainable construction, economic crisis, life cycle analysis (LCA), green buildings.