Combining Concepts of Energetic, Environmental and Economic Life Cycle Balance towards an Integrated Life Cycle Approach (original) (raw)
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LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING BUILDINGS
The embodied energy in building materials constitutes a large part of the total energy required for any building. In working to make buildings more energy efficient this needs to be considered. Integrating considerations about life cycle assessment for buildings and materials is one promising way to reduce the amount of energy consumption being used within the building sector and the environmental impacts associated with that energy. Life-cycle assessment is a decision-making support tool which provides an account of the materials and energy used in a product and assesses the related environmental impact. In this paper LCA is reviewed from a buildings perspective. The aim of this paper is to review Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a means of evaluating the environmental impact of buildings.A life cycle assessment (LCA) model can be utilized to help evaluate the embodied energy in building materials in comparison to the buildings operational energy. This thesis takes into consideration the potential life cycle reductions in energy and CO2 emissions that can be made through an energy retrofit of an existing building verses demolition and replacement.
Life cycle assessment of residential buildings
2005
Residential building construction represented about 4.2% of the US Gross Domestic Product in 2000, and residences consumed nearly 20% of total US energy consumption. However, design and construction of residential buildings is often not conducted with an analysis of the life cycle costs and environmental impacts. In this paper, we outline an approach to a life cycle analysis for residences, using the results of a typical construction cost estimate to map into tools for environmental life cycle assessment (using the Carnegie Mellon economic ...
Life Cycle Analysis of Buildings - A Literature Review
Reducing energy consumption is a critical issue for our human civilization. As our population grows, and as our energy consumption increases, more and more natural resources are depleted or destroyed in the process of producing energy to sustain ourselves. Release of carbon dioxide and methane from our current means of energy production is at a dangerous level, one that threatens to plunge the planet into catastrophic climate change. Reducing our energy usage is one critical component of avoiding those outcomes, and one key way of reducing our energy usage is through changing the design of our dwellings: the buildings in which we live, work, and visit. In order to make our buildings more energy-efficient, we can use a tool called life-cycle assessment (LCA). Life-cycle assessment measures the costs associated with the entire process involved in a product's existence, including material acquisition, processing, transportation, construction, usage, maintenance, demolition, and disposal/recycling. This review will examine the scientific literature on the process of LCA, on the results of LCA when applied to energy conservation in buildings, and how to better apply LCA towards the building industry.
Life-Cycle Assessment Methods in Building
ISO 14040 defined four main phases of life-cycle assessment study, each affecting the other phases in some way. When LCA is applied to the building, the product studied is the building itself, and the assessment will be defined according to a certain level and contain all the materials processes. This level 2 0 1 6 could be called ―whole process of building and there are many tools available to work at this level. If the LCA is concerned with a part of the building, building component or material, the level 2 0 1 6 could be called ―building material and component combination and in this case it is very important to recognize the component impact equivalent according to the functional unit of the building. LCA should be part of the design process as a decision making support tool, to be used by the designers of the building in parallel with other aspects like cost, and functional requirements. The balance between these three criteria is the task of the architect/ designer to achieve the optimum performance of the building. Brainstorming during LCA in the early stages of the design will help find alternatives to the current proposals which better achieve this balance. It is very necessary to consider the functions of the studied construction itself, as the environmental impacts of civil constructions are different from those of buildings, which are dominated by energy consumption. It has been estimated that the use phase in conventional buildings represents approximately 80% to 90% of the life-cycle energy use, while 10% to 20% is consumed by the material extraction and production and less than 1% through end-of-life treatments. By the development of energy-efficient buildings and the use of less-polluting energy sources, the contribution of the material production and end-of-life phases is expected to increase in the future. Lastly it is important to note that the building's location and orientation will have considerable impacts on its energy consumption, and therefore on the overall environmental impacts. For example, the benefits from the use of
Integrated life cycle analysis of residential buildings : benchmarks and uncertainties
2012
The building specific LCA differs from other LCA by the uncertainty of the long observation period. The framework of an integrated analysis (life cycle costing, life cycle impact assessment, energy calculation and health risk assessment) allows a cross validation and a link to measured data (costs, energy consumption, user satisfaction). In the same framework consistent benchmarks (reference-, limitand target-values) can be established as a basis for sustainability assessment. The “solution space” of different benchmarks can be compared to an “uncertainty space”. First results of this approach are presented and the influence of the reference study period is discussed.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely known methodology for "cradle to grave" investigation of the environmental impacts of products and technological lifecycles; however, this methodology has not been yet broadly used as an eco-design tool among the practitioners of the building sector. We applied LCA on three conventional Italian buildings -a detached residential house, a multi-family and a multi-story office building. Our analysis includes all the life stages, from the production of the construction materials, to their transportation, assembling, lighting, appliances, cooling-and heating-usages during the operating phase, to the end of life of all the materials and components. We found that the operation phase has the greatest contribution to the total impact (from 77% of that of the detached house, up to 85% of the office building), whereas the impact of the construction phase ranges from about 14% (office building) to 21% (detached house). We carried further analyses to evaluate the influence of various optimizations of the buildings, e.g., more efficient envelopes and facilities, on the entire life cycle of the three buildings. In addition, we propose a methodological approach, which can contribute to the acceptance of LCA as a tool in the eco-friendly design of buildings, especially those buildings whose impact during the construction phase needs to be carefully checked, such as Nearly Zero Energy Buildings.
Journal of Cleaner Production
Nowadays, with the new technology, the explosion of new products and the implementation of the new construction rules, it is important to evaluate the effect of the strong human pressure on nature. Thus, the analysis of the life cycle of a product (i.e., building) makes it possible to evaluate its main environmental impacts (energy demand, greenhouse gas emissions, product waste, water consumption, etc.) from raw materials manufacturing to its end of life (demolition).The purpose of this research is to carryout a meticulous statistical analysis aimed to better understand and to discern better the impact of sustainable buildings and old buildings on the environment. In addition, this research identifies the main elements that affect the environment during the construction, operation, renovation, and demolition of buildings.59 residences were analyzed (29 durable residences and 30 old residences), distributed in two districts of the Liege city. Several software tools were used(IBM SPSS statistical, ALCYONE, COMFIE-PLEIADES, and nova-EQUER) to statistically evaluate the 12 environmental impacts considered in this study .The results showed that the impacts of sustainable buildings and old buildings on the environment are very significant. Despite that, it is difficult to identify a clear difference between the environmentalimpact from old and sustainable buildings .The total lifecycle greenhouse gas(LCGHG) and energy of the whole the residential buildings represents 17.225 ktCO 2-e and 362.8TJ, respectively, over 100 years. The building operation phase (or use phase) consume significant amount of life cycle energy (from 81.0 to 94.3%), but also, the largest contribution to the life cycle greenhouse gas (between 75.6% and 91.3%).
Life cycle inventory of buildings: A calculation method
Building and Environment, 2010
Traditionally, life cycle assessment (LCA) is mostly concerned with product design and hardly considers large systems, such as buildings, as a whole. Though, by limiting LCA to building materials or building components, boundary conditions, such as thermal comfort and indoor air quality, cannot be taken into account. The life cycle inventory (LCI) model presented in this paper forms part of a global methodology that combines advanced optimisation techniques, LCI and cost-benefit assessment to optimise low energy buildings simultaneously for energy, environmental impact and costs without neglecting the boundary conditions for thermal comfort, indoor air quality and legal requirements for energy performance. This paper first outlines the goal and scope of the LCI. Then, the partial inventory models as well as the overall building inventory model are presented. Finally, the LCI results are shown and discussed for one reference dwelling for the context of Belgium.