Power: A new paradigm for energy use in sustainable construction

To achieve a sustainable management of resources, political and economic decision-makers need indicators to quantify their technical choice in relation with resource consumption. In this study, a new indicator that reflects the power demand next to energy demand of systems such as buildings is developed. The relevance of the proposed power indicator is tested through two different kinds of systems: retaining walls for civil and agricultural engineering and residential houses. It enables to highlight a close relation between this indicator and the high power energy sources that may exist at different steps of a building's life cycle. This dependence is presented as a better indicator of sustainability than a traditional energy account as it reflects the ability for the system to rely on flow energies rather than on stock energies.