I could provide some feedback about the main questions, however I can not answer the follow up question because I do not know about construction. What I could tell is that construction materials and design affect the 'sustainability" of a business. To manage the energy consumption of a building there are "mainly" two variables: the design of the building (lay out, materials, location, orientation, etc.) and the active energy management that you do once the building is up and running (light control, temperature control, energy generation (by the building, through, for instance, solar panels), etc.). The goal of any building is at least to be energy balance zero (energy consumption = energy generated). However if a building can generate more than what it consumes, even better, because the remaining energy can be sold to the market or to microgrids. Hope this helps.