Climate protection through intelligent construction: Baykomm

Special Story

Climate protection through intelligent construction

Adapting a building to the climate is better than adapting the climate to a building. This would be an apt slogan for Bayer MaterialScience’s “EcoCommercial Building” initiative. It reflects the principle of bringing together the best materials, systems and technologies in order to construct a building to suit the climatic conditions at the site in question.

The first project in Bayer MaterialScience's

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The first project in Bayer MaterialScience’s “EcoCommercial Building” initiative is taking shape near New Delhi in India.

Commissioned by Bayer MaterialScience at a cost of some EUR five million, the first project to be implemented as part of the “EcoCommercial Building” initiative is the BMS Innovation Center in Noida, near New Delhi in India. The project consists of an office building with a usable area of some 1,200 square meters for approximately 50 employees and an adjoining display hall that will cover around 1,000 square meters and have a ceiling height of six meters.

In 2004, the greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the construction and running of buildings amounted to some 18 percent, or almost a fifth, of all emissions produced by human activity. This includes energy that is generated outside the buildings themselves but is used within them, for example electricity and district heating. Experts believe that the consistent use of high-performance insulation materials could almost halve future growth in building-related energy consumption.

Comprehensive studies have demonstrated the impressive energy balance offered by the high-performance insulating material polyurethane. For example, when used as heat insulation in the roofs of residential buildings, this foam material will, over a period of 50 years, save seventy times the amount of energy needed to manufacture it. Moreover, the material usually pays for itself within just a few years, thereby making efficient heat insulation an extremely attractive climate protection tool in both ecological and economic terms.

"EcoCommercial Building", Quicktime Video
(01:37; 5.9 MB)

Transparent and translucent Makrolon® multiwall sheets in the i-LINE product range marketed by Bayer Sheet Europe also offer outstanding thermal insulation properties. This makes them ideal for atrium roofing and façade cladding. Compared with solid sheeting, they enable energy savings of up to 25 percent.

Bayer MaterialScience is contributing to environmentally sound, eco-friendly construction in other ways, too; for example through its polycarbonate and thermoplastic polyurethane components for photovoltaic modules and raw materials for low-solvent and solvent-free coatings and adhesives.