Developing non-residential building stock archetypes for LCI—a German case study of office and administration buildings

Purpose To accomplish the national and international climate goals, building renovation and optimisation of their energy and resource efficiency are essential. Thus, reliable information on the building stock (BS) is necessary. Most previous building typologies are focussing on residential buildings and the operational phase. This paper shows the development of a methodology for generating non-residential building (NRB) typologies for life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) of building constructions. Hereby, archetypes of office, administration and department (OAD) buildings are developed, exemplarily for the German NRB stock. The methodology can further be utilised for quantity surveying of urban material stocks, related recycling scenarios and waste management. Furthermore, the exemplarily generated archetypes provide necessary information for the estimation of realistic refurbishment scenarios. Methods Approaches for the development of NRB archetypes, the descriptions of associated building materials and the LCI of BS were analysed and integrated into a methodology. It provides a clear path on the classification in building usage categories and determination of relevant building parameters for conducting LCI studies. Its aim is the creation of NRB typologies, presenting construction materials and building geometry in a useful way for life-cycle assessments (LCA). To demonstrate the methodology’s usability, it is applied to a case study with the sample of 161 OAD buildings, provided by the German NRB database ENOB:dataNWG. In combination with relevant literature on BS archetypes and materials, a sample OAD building typology has been created. Results and discussion Minimum data requirements for conducting simplified LCI calculation of BSs were identified by analysing existing LCA methods, like the German BNB system. Important clusters for developing NRB archetypes were determined: building usage category, building construction types and building age. These data gaps between required information for simplified LCA studies and available information in ENOB:dataNWG were identified, and solutions for closing these data gaps were proposed and tested. Since building archetypes must reflect the overall BS, uncertainties were discussed. The ENOB:dataNWG database was not completed at the time this paper was written, so comprehensive uncertainty analyses are important next steps. Conclusions This methodology development forms the groundwork for creating LCI building typologies for simplified LCA studies. It shows practically how to deal with a BS database and illustrates which typical values can be chosen for closing data gaps. The methodology was tested on an exemplary sample of OAD buildings. Based on this case study, the methodology concept was proven useful for the generation of a NRB typology.

Challenges of Applying Simplified LCA Tools in Sustainable Design Pedagogy

The growing recognition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been integrated globally into product design and business activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a useful tool for designers to apply in the early stages of product design to mitigate the environmental impact. The study aims to identify the challenges of applying simplified LCA tools to improve the eco-efficiency of products and achieve a higher level of sustainable innovation. The study was conducted in a sustainable design course at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, for four consecutive years. All challenges and opportunities by using ECO-it, Eco-indicators, and the Materials, Energy use, and Toxic emissions (MET) matrix to assess the environmental impact in each phase of 11 home appliances are presented and discussed. Results show the positive potential of applying the tools to achieve function innovation in design for sustainable innovation. The needs for guided instruction, the availability of the database, the complexity of a study product, and the overlooking of social dimensions are four major challenges in applying the tools in the early stages of product redesign. Further study in testing the tools and developing a database in collaboration with industries should be conducted to compare and validate the results.

Incorporating Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Freight Transportation Infrastructure Project Evaluation

Transportation industry at large is a major consumer of fossil fuels and contributes heavily to the global greenhouse gas emissions. A significant portion of these emissions come from freight transportation and decisions on mode/route may affect the overall scale of emissions from a specific movement. It is common to consider several alternatives for a new freight activity and compare the alternatives from economic perspective. However, there is a growing emphasis for adding emissions to this evaluation process. One of the approaches to do this is through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); a method for estimating the emissions, energy consumption and environmental impacts of the project throughout its life cycle. Since modal/route selections are often investigated early in the planning stage of the project, availability of data and resources for analysis may become a challenge for completing a detailed LCA on alternatives. This research builds on such detailed LCA comparison performed on a previous case study by Kalluri et al. (2016), but it also investigates whether a simplified LCA process that only includes emissions from operations phase could be used as a less resource intensive option for the analysis while still providing relevant outcomes. The detailed LCA is performed using SimaPro software and simplified LCA is performed using GREET 2016 model. The results are obtained in terms of Kg CO2 equivalents of GHG emissions. This paper introduces both detailed and simplified methodologies and applies them to a case study of a nickel and copper mine in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The analysis’ are done for three modal alternatives (two truck routes and one rail route) and for multiple mine lives.

ANALISIS SISTEM PENGELOLAAN SAMPAH PERKANTORAN KOTA PADANG MENGGUNAKAN METODE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)is a method to assess and to evaluate total environmental impact of a product, process or service. Simplified LCA has applied to solid waste management of institutional source of Padang City which applies two types of systems included Mixed Management System and Separated Management System. Study based on solid waste management of Major Office of Padang City which generated waste as 5.1194 m3 per week. Life cycle of mixed management system consist of generation, storage, collection, transportation to landfill, treatment on landfill, transportation to informal recycler, and treatment of informal recycler. Separated management system consist of generation, storage, collection, transportation to informal recycler, treatment on informal recycler, transportation to landfill, and treatment on landfill. Total material generated was 6.6320 m3 /weekon mixed system and 4.1815 m3/ weekon separated system. Energy needed for mixed system was 0.0164 m3/ weekand 0.0102 m3/ weekon separated system. The highest environmental impact for both systems were on ecosystem quality damage for treatment on landfill phase as 13.1519 weighting unit of mixed system and 7.7743 weighting unit for treatment on landfill for separated system. Comparative analysis of both systems on equal quantity of waste reveals that separated system is more environmentally friendly than mixed system. Keywords: Simplified LCA, solid waste management system of institutional source, mixed system, separated system, environmental impactpengolahan di lapak (lapak besar dan bandar), sedangkan untuk sistem terpisah terdiri dari tahap timbulan, tahap pewadahan, tahap pengumpulan, tahap pengangkutan ke lapak, tahap pengolahan di lapak (lapak kecil, lapak besar, dan Bandar), tahap pengangkutan ke TPA, dan tahap pengolahan di TPA. Total buangan material sebesar 6,6320 m3/mingguuntuk sistem tercampur dan 4,1815 m3/mingguuntuk sistem terpisah, volume energi yang dibutuhkan sistem tercampur yaitu 0,0164 m3/minggudan 0,0102 m3/mingguuntuk sistem terpisah. Dampak lingkungan terbesar yang mungkin terjadi adalah potensi gangguan keseimbangan ekologi, yaitu sebesar 13,1519 satuan bobot untuk pengolahan di TPA sistem tercampur dan 7,7743 satuan bobot untuk pengolahan di TPA sistem terpisah. Berdasarkan hasil analisis yang diperoleh, untuk sampah dengan kuantitas yang sama, sistem terpisah lebih ramah lingkungan dibandingkan sistem tercampur. Kata-kata kunci: LCA sederhana, sistem pengelolaan sampah perkantoran, sistem tercampur, sistem terpisah, dampak lingkungan

The Prosumer Paradigm for Life Cycle Assessment Services

Enterprises, governments, and government agencies have started to publish their data on the Internet, especially in the form of open structured data sources. The real exploitation of these free, large open data sources is more and more becoming a crucial activity for obtaining information and knowledge (i.e. competitive elements) in several business sectors. In addition, with the proliferation of Web 2.0 techniques and applications such as blogs, wikis, tagging systems, and mashups, the notion of user-centricity has gained a significant momentum to put ordinary users in the leading role of delivering exciting and personalized content and services. The term “prosumer,” coined by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1980, has been often referenced in business-related contexts to identify this situation. The chapter describes the application of the “prosumer paradigm” to a real data integration system of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). ENEA, the Italian National Agency for new Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development, promoted the adoption of such practice in small companies belonging to the industrial and agricultural sector supplying them with a simplified LCA system. In this chapter, the authors show how a domain expert user (the prosumer) can use the framework to easily map the classification of data flows and processes provided by the simplified LCA system into the ELCD database, containing a standard classification provided by the EU. This makes the proposal completely shareable with the whole thematic classification and vision promoted by the European Commission.