Whole-building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a passive house of the sub-tropical climatic zone

2017 ◽  
Vol 116 ◽  
pp. 169-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angeliki Kylili ◽  
Milos Ilic ◽  
Paris A. Fokaides
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Climatic Zone ◽  
Passive House ◽  
Building Life Cycle

scholarly journals Importance of building services in ecological building assessments

2019 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 03061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Lambertz ◽  
Sebastian Theißen ◽  
Jannick Höper ◽  
Reinhard Wimmer
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Simplified Approach ◽  
Ecological Requirements ◽  
Building Information ◽  
Building Life Cycle

The new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) 2018 and the GebäudeEnergieGesetz (GEG) tightened the requirements for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources in buildings at EU and national levels. Environmental impacts from manufacturing, dismantling and recycling of buildings are not taken into account. Green Building Certification Systems, such as the DGNB or BNB systems, are therefore the only ones that (voluntarily) set holistic, ecological requirements for buildings. Based on a Whole-Building Life Cycle Assessment, the entire building life cycle and its environmental effects are evaluated. While building services in this context are usually only included in such a simplified approach, the full scope of the produced environmental impacts are underestimated and misjudged for the reduction of emissions and other environmental impacts. This publication uses the results of a life cycle assessment of a typical office building (in Germany) to show the amount of influence building services have on environmental impacts of buildings. Furthermore the study shows an approach how the very high pro-curement and calculation effort of LCA can be reduced by linking the Building Information Modelling (BIM) Method and LCA models to enable a significantly more efficient and easier calculation process, es-pecially for building services.

Functional unit influence on building life cycle assessment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Henrique de Simone Souza ◽  
Patrícia Pereira de Abreu Evangelista ◽  
Diego Lima Medeiros ◽  
Jaume Albertí ◽  
Pere Fullana-i-Palmer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Functional Unit ◽  
Building Life Cycle

scholarly journals Exploring the current challenges and emerging approaches in whole building life cycle assessment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haibo Feng ◽  
Kasun KN Hewage ◽  
Rehan Sadiq
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Structure Complexity ◽  
Building Life Cycle ◽  
Significant Attention ◽  
Critical Literature ◽  
Goal And Scope ◽  
Goal And Scope Definition

The environmental impacts of building stock has received significant attention as buildings release one third of total greenhouse gas emissions. Whole-building life cycle assessment (WBLCA) has become a trend to address this limitation by ensuring best environmental performance of a building However, the current WBLCA development faces many challenges which makes it hard to create reliable and comparable results. The study aims to conduct a critical literature review to summarize the current challenges on WBLCA applications, and the emerging approaches that might address these challenges. Three main challenges are listed: variances on goal and scope definition, building structure complexity, and varieties on LCA database and methods. Emerging approaches are also presented to address these challenges including integration of BIM into WBLCA and EPD applications in impact assessments. Findings of this study could support researchers and decision makers with the most popular approaches to conduct WBLCA and achieve reliable outputs.

scholarly journals Comparing Three Building Life Cycle Assessment Tools for the Canadian Construction Industry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hayley Cormick
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Bill Of Materials ◽  
Building Life Cycle

This research aims to contribute to quantifying whole building life cycle assessment using various software tools to determine how they can aid the construction industry in reducing carbon emissions, and in particular embodied emissions, through analysis and reporting. The conducted research seeks to examine and compare three whole building life cycle assessment tools; Athena Impact Estimator, Tally and One-Click LCA to relate the input variability to the outputs of the three programs. The three whole building life-cycle assessments were conducted using a case study building with an identical bill of materials and compared to determine the applicability and strengths of one program over another. The research confirmed that the three programs output significantly different results given the variability in scope, allowable program inputs and generated “black-box” back-end calculations, where the outputted whole building life cycle carbon equivalents of One-Click LCA is less than half than of Tally meaning the programs outputs cannot be simply compared side-by-side.

scholarly journals Embodied GHG Emissions of Wooden Buildings—Challenges of Biogenic Carbon Accounting in Current LCA Methods

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. E. Andersen ◽  
F. N. Rasmussen ◽  
G. Habert ◽  
H. Birgisdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Carbon Accounting ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Final Sample ◽  
Biogenic Carbon ◽  
Building Life Cycle

Buildings play a vital role in reaching the targets stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Increasing the use of wood in construction is a proposed upcoming strategy to reduce the embodied greenhouse gas emissions of buildings. This study examines existing life cycle assessments of wooden buildings. The aim is to investigate embodied greenhouse gas emission results reported, as well as methodological approaches applied in existing literature. The study applies the protocol for Systematic Literature Reviews and finds 79 relevant papers. From the final sample, the study analyses 226 different scenarios in-depth in terms of embodied emissions, life cycle assessment method, life cycle inventory modelling and biogenic carbon approach. The analysis shows that the average reported values of embodied greenhouse gas emissions of wooden buildings are one-third to half of the embodied emissions reported from buildings in general. Additionally, from the analysis of the final sample we find that the majority of wooden building life cycle assessments apply similar methods and often leave out biogenic carbon from the assessment or simply do not declare it. This implies that the focus on variability in the different methods applied in wooden building life cycle assessments needs to be increased to establish the relationship between methodological choices and embodied emissions of wooden buildings. Further, transparency and conformity in biogenic carbon accounting in life cycle assessments is essential to enhance comparability between life cycle assessment studies and to avoid distortions in embodied GHG emission results.

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