ENERGY CONSUMPTION, ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS AND EFFECTIVE MEASURES OF GREEN OFFICE BUILDINGS: A LIFE CYCLE APPROACH

The last few decades have witnessed a rapid development of green buildings in China especially the office sector. The life cycle assessment (LCA) approach has potential to weigh the benefits and costs associated with green building developments. Essentially, the LCA method evaluates the costs and benefits across a building's life cycle with a system approach. In this study, a green office building in Beijing, China, was analyzed by life cycle assessment to quantify its energy use and evaluate the environmental impacts in each life cycle stage. The environmental impacts can be reduced by 7.3%, 1.6% and 0.8% by using 30% gas-fired electricity generation, increasing the summer indoor temperature by 1°C, and switching off office equipment and lighting during lunchtime, respectively. Similarly, by reusing 80% of the selected materials when the building is finally demolished, the three major adverse environmental impacts on human health, ecosystem quality, and resource depletion can be reduced by 11.3% 12.7%, and 7.1% respectively. Sensitivity analysis shows that electricity conservation is more effective than materials efficiency in terms of a reduction in environmental impacts. These findings are useful to inform decision makers in different stages of the green building life cycle.

Download Full-text

Life Cycle Assessment of viticultural technical management routes (TMRs): comparison between an organic and an integrated management route

OENO One ◽

10.20870/oeno-one.2016.50.2.783 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Anthony Rouault ◽

Sandra Beauchet ◽

Christel Renaud-Gentie ◽

Frédérique Jourjon

Keyword(s):

Heavy Metal ◽

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Plant Protection ◽

Resource Depletion ◽

Impact Categories ◽

Nitrogen Emissions ◽

Technical Management ◽

Lca Results

Aims: Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), this study aims to compare the environmental impacts of two different viticultural technical management routes (TMRs); integrated and organic) and to identify the operations that contribute the most to the impacts.Methods and results: LCA impact scores were expressed in two functional units: 1 ha of cultivated area and 1 kg of collected grape. We studied all operations from field preparation before planting to the end-of-life of the vine. Inputs and outputs were transformed into potential environmental impacts thanks to SALCA™ (V1.02) and USETox™ (V1.03) methods. Plant protection treatments were a major cause of impact for both TMRs for fuel-related impact categories. For both TMRs, the main contributors to natural resource depletion and freshwater ecotoxicity were trellis system installation and background heavy metal emissions, respectively.Conclusion: This study shows that the studied organic TMR has higher impact scores than the integrated TMR for all the chosen impact categories except eutrophication. However, the chosen TMRs are only typical of integrated and organic viticulture in Loire Valley and some emission models (heavy metal, fuel-related emissions, and nitrogen emissions) have to be improved in order to better assess the environmental impacts of viticulture. Soil quality should also be integrated to LCA results in viticulture because this lack may be a disadvantage for organic viticulture.Significance and impact of study: This study is among the first to compare LCA results of an integrated and an organic TMR.

Download Full-text

Evaluating the Environmental Impact Score of a Residential Building Using Life Cycle Assessment

Research Anthology on Environmental and Societal Well-Being Considerations in Buildings and Architecture ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-9032-4.ch006 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 142-159

Author(s):

Manish Sakhlecha ◽

Samir Bajpai ◽

Rajesh Kumar Singh

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Natural Resources ◽

Impact Assessment ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Residential Building ◽

Resource Depletion ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Construction Methods ◽

Growing Economy

Buildings consume major amount of energy as well as natural resources leading to negative environmental impacts like resource depletion and pollution. The current task for the construction sector is to develop an evaluation tool for rating of buildings based on their environmental impacts. There are various assessment tools and models developed by different agencies in different countries to evaluate building's effect on environment. Although these tools have been successfully used and implemented in the respective regions of their origin, the problems of application occur, especially during regional adaptation in other countries due to peculiarities associated with the specific geographic location, climatic conditions, construction methods and materials. India is a rapidly growing economy with exponential increase in housing sector. Impact assessment model for a residential building has been developed based on life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. The life cycle impact assessment score was obtained for a sample house considering fifteen combinations of materials paired with 100% thermal electricity and 70%-30% thermal-solar combination, applying normalization and weighting to the LCA results. The LCA score of portland slag cement with burnt clay red brick and 70%-30% thermal-solar combination (PSC+TS+RB) was found to have the best score and ordinary Portland cement with flyash brick and 100% thermal power (OPC+T+FAB) had the worst score, showing the scope for further improvement in LCA model to include positive scores for substitution of natural resources with industrial waste otherwise polluting the environment.

Download Full-text

Importance of building services in ecological building assessments

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/201911103061 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 111 ◽

pp. 03061 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

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.

Download Full-text

Comparison of Life Cycle Assessment of Two Toasters

Volume 2: 31st Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Parts A and B ◽

10.1115/detc2011-48772 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Raghunathan Srinivasan ◽

Gaurav Ameta

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Energy Use ◽

Recovery Phase ◽

Raw Material ◽

Energy Impact ◽

Household Products ◽

Use Phase ◽

One Year

The objective of this paper is to determine and compare the environmental impacts of two toasters: standard and eco-friendly. The most rapidly growing sector for the e-waste world comes from Electronic household products. More than 2 million tons of electronic products are disposed off as solid waste to landfills in the US alone. The demand for energy supplies has been rapidly increasing in the past decade. Strict legislative measures should be enforced to protect the environment by making industries collect back the manufactured products at the End-of-Life (EOL) from the users and recycle the products. If these necessary steps are not taken, then these e-wastes will impose serious threat to society and the environment. In order to re-design environmentally friendly products and facilitate sustainable take-back planning, current products need to be evaluated for their environmental impacts. One of the widely used methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of a product is called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a cradle to grave approach for assessing the environmental impacts of a product. The cradle to grave approach includes raw material phase, manufacturing and assembly phase, use phase, recovery phase and disposal phase. The system boundary for LCA presented in this paper includes material phase, manufacturing phase, use-phase and disposal phase. The functional unit for the LCA is entire life of the toaster which is one year based on manufacturer’s warranty which also includes the rate of usage. The environmental impacts from the two toasters as presented in this paper include eutrophication, acidification, energy-use and global warming. The use phase energy impact is experimentally determined.

Download Full-text

Life Cycle Assessment on Different Synthetic Routes of ZIF-8 Nanomaterials

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14164998 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (16) ◽

pp. 4998

Author(s):

Vasileios Ntouros ◽

Ioannis Kousis ◽

Dimitra Papadaki ◽

Anna Laura Pisello ◽

Margarita Niki Assimakopoulos

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Environmental Sustainability ◽

Energy Use ◽

Renewable Energy Sources ◽

Electricity Consumption ◽

Research Activity ◽

Synthetic Routes ◽

The Impact

In the last twenty years, research activity around the environmental applications of metal–organic frameworks has bloomed due to their CO2 capture ability, tunable properties, porosity, and well-defined crystalline structure. Thus, hundreds of MOFs have been developed. However, the impact of their production on the environment has not been investigated as thoroughly as their potential applications. In this work, the environmental performance of various synthetic routes of MOF nanoparticles, in particular ZIF-8, is assessed through a life cycle assessment. For this purpose, five representative synthesis routes were considered, and synthesis data were obtained based on available literature. The synthesis included different solvents (de-ionized water, methanol, dimethylformamide) as well as different synthetic steps (i.e., hours of drying, stirring, precursor). The findings revealed that the main environmental weak points identified during production were: (a) the use of dimethylformamide (DMF) and methanol (MeOH) as substances impacting environmental sustainability, which accounted for more than 85% of the overall environmental impacts in those synthetic routes where they were utilized as solvents and as cleaning agents at the same time; (b) the electricity consumption, especially due to the Greek energy mix which is fossil-fuel dependent, and accounted for up to 13% of the overall environmental impacts in some synthetic routes. Nonetheless, for the optimization of the impacts provided by the energy use, suggestions are made based on the use of alternative, cleaner renewable energy sources, which (for the case of wind energy) will decrease the impacts by up to 2%.

Download Full-text

A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Meat Trays Made of Various Packaging Materials

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su11195324 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (19) ◽

pp. 5324 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Daniel Maga ◽

Markus Hiebel ◽

Venkat Aryan

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

End Of Life ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Polyethylene Terephthalate ◽

Environmental Assessment ◽

Life Stage ◽

Resource Depletion ◽

Assessment Method ◽

Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol

In light of the debate on the circular economy, the EU strategy for plastics, and several national regulations, such as the German Packaging Act, polymeric foam materials as well as hybrid packaging (multilayered plastic) are now in focus. To understand the environmental impacts of various tray solutions for meat packaging, a comparative environmental assessment was conducted. As an environmental assessment method, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied following the ISO standards 14040/44. The nine packaging solutions investigated were: PS-based trays (extruded polystyrene and extruded polystyrene with five-layered structure containing ethylene vinyl alcohol), PET-based trays (recycled polyethylene terephthalate, with and without polyethylene layer, and amorphous polyethylene terephthalate), polypropylene (PP) and polylactic acid (PLA). The scope of the LCA study included the production of the tray and the end-of-life stage. The production of meat, the filling of the tray with meat and the tray sealing were not taken into account. The results show that the PS-based trays, especially the mono material solutions made of extruded polystyrene (XPS), show the lowest environmental impact across all 12 impact categories except for resource depletion. Multilayer products exhibit higher environmental impacts. The LCA also shows that the end-of-life stage has an important influence on the environmental performance of trays. However, the production of the trays dominates the overall results. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis illustrates that, even if higher recycling rates were realised in the future, XPS based solutions would still outperform the rest from an environmental perspective.

Download Full-text

Evaluation of Life-Cycle Assessment Analysis: Application to Restoration Projects and New Construction in Alpine Climate, Japan

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13073608 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (7) ◽

pp. 3608

Author(s):

Yohei Endo ◽

Hideki Takamura

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Energy Use ◽

Heritage Buildings ◽

Operational Energy ◽

Protection Legislation ◽

New Construction ◽

Analysis Application ◽

Materials Used

The present paper discusses the applications of life-cycle assessment (LCA) to construction works in Japan. LCA has been frequently used to assess the environmental impacts of new construction. Nonetheless, the applications of LCA to restoration have not been fully confirmed to date. It is said that historical buildings may contribute to sustainable development. Nonetheless, as for heritage buildings, since the protection of cultural value is usually prioritised, their environmental impacts may not be sufficiently explored. To this aim, this paper evaluated the environmental impacts of the restoration of heritage buildings. This paper consisted of two tasks. First, the restoration projects of heritage buildings in Japan were introduced. The restoration of two heritage houses was discussed, referring to heritage protection legislation in Japan. Second, LCA was performed on the restoration of heritage houses and the construction of contemporary houses. Environmental impacts were compared between the restoration and new construction with regard to greenhouse gas emissions and operational energy use. A focus was given to the amount of materials used. Restoration consumes a limited amount of materials compared to new construction, although the energy use of heritage buildings is considerable. The environmental impacts of restoration were quantified so that they were compared with those of new construction. The comparison indicated issues applying LCA to heritage buildings.

Download Full-text

Life-Cycle Assessment of the Breezhaler® Breath-Actuated Dry Powder Inhaler

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13126657 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (12) ◽

pp. 6657

Author(s):

Brett Fulford ◽

Karen Mezzi ◽

Andy Whiting ◽

Simon Aumônier

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impact ◽

Raw Materials ◽

Dry Powder Inhaler ◽

Resource Depletion ◽

Life Cycle Stage ◽

Low Carbon ◽

Dry Powder ◽

The Impact

The Breezhaler® dry powder inhaler (DPI) has a low carbon footprint compared with other inhalation therapies, consistent with the literature on other DPIs. This life-cycle assessment was conducted in France, Germany, the UK, and Japan using a “cradle-to-grave” technique to evaluate six environmental impact categories (global warming potential; acidification; ozone depletion; use of resource, minerals, and metals; eco-toxicity; and freshwater use) associated with the use of the Breezhaler®. Three variants of the Breezhaler® (30-day packs with and without the digital companion and a 90-day pack without the digital companion) were evaluated to identify major hotspots in the device life-cycle and to provide realistic solutions to reduce the environmental impact. Although no single life-cycle stage dominated the climate change impact of the 30-day device with the digital companion, the inhaler’s raw materials and packaging contributed to 96% of the resource depletion impact for the 30-day device without the digital companion. For the 90-day device without the digital companion, packaging contributed 42–62% of the impact across all categories. Overall, the Breezhaler® inhaler with the 90-day pack had the lowest environmental impact. The environmental impact of the device did not vary significantly among the considered markets. Further studies are needed to assess the impact of active pharmaceutical ingredients and improvement in clinical outcomes on the environment.

Download Full-text

Environmental Profile Study of Ozone Decolorization of Reactive Dyed Cotton Textiles by Utilizing Life Cycle Assessment

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13031225 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 1225

Author(s):

Ajinkya Powar ◽

Anne Perwuelz ◽

Nemeshwaree Behary ◽

Le Vinh Hoang ◽

Thierry Aussenac ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Impact Category ◽

Resource Depletion ◽

Experimental Conditions ◽

Relative Value ◽

Cotton Textiles ◽

The Impact ◽

Profile Study

Research approaches on the use of ecotechnologies like ozone assisted processes for the decolorization of textiles are being explored as against the conventional alkaline reductive process for the color stripping of the cotton textiles. The evaluation of these ecotechnologies must be performed to assess the environmental impacts. Partial “gate to gate” Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was implemented to study the ozone based decolorization process of the reactive dyed cotton textiles. Experiments were performed to determine input and output data flows for decolorization treatment of reactive dyed cotton textile using the ozonation process. The functional unit was defined as “treatment of 40 g of reactive dyed cotton fabric to achieve more than 94% color stripping”. Generic and specific data bases were also used to determine flows, and International Life Cycle Data system (ILCD) method was selected to convert all flows into environmental impacts. The impact category “Water resource depletion” is the highest for all the ozonation processes as it has the greatest relative value after normalization amongst all the impact indicators. Electricity and Oxygen formation were found to be the major contributors to the environmental impacts. New experimental conditions have been studied to optimize the impacts.

Download Full-text

Solid-State Fermentation (SSF) versus Submerged Fermentation (SmF) for the Recovery of Cellulases from Coffee Husks: A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Based Comparison

Energies ◽

10.3390/en13112685 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (11) ◽

pp. 2685 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Eva Catalán ◽

Antoni Sánchez

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Solid State ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Solid State Fermentation ◽

Submerged Fermentation ◽

Energy Use ◽

Production Systems ◽

Cellulase Production ◽

Coffee Husk

This article studies the environmental impacts of cellulase production by using a comparative attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of two different scenarios of production. The first one is the commonly used submerged fermentation (SmF) using a pure substrate (cellulose powder) and a specific microorganism (Trichoderma reesei). The second scenario considers a novel system to produce enzymes and simultaneously treat a waste using the solid-state fermentation (SSF) process of coffee husk (CH) used as substrate. Experimental data were used in this scenario. The complete production process was studied for these two technologies including the fermentation phase and the complete downstream of cellulase. Life cycle inventory (LCI) data were collected from the database EcoInvent v3 (SimaPro 8.5) modified by data from literature and pilot scale experiments. The environmental impacts of both production systems revealed that those of SmF were higher than those of SSF. A sensitivity analysis showed that the results are highly conditioned by the energy use in the form of electricity during lyophilization, which is needed in both technologies. The results point to a possible alternative to produce the cellulase enzyme while reducing environmental impacts.

Download Full-text