A Holistic Framework for Determining the Trade-off between Embodied and Operational Carbon Emissions of High-rise Residential Buildings

Abstract

Buildings’ carbon emissions consist of embodied carbon (EC) associated with the production and transportation of materials and operational carbon (OC) generated from consumed energy during daily use. However, previous studies concentrated on either EC or OC but ignored an integrated analysis of their relationships. Therefore, this paper aims to explore appropriate building envelope design solutions by examining the trade-off between EC and OC of high-rise residential buildings. To achieve this aim, the life cycle assessment method was used to evaluate the EC and OC of the residential buildings using SimaPro and DesignBuilder software. A building information modelling (BIM) model was developed to extract the geometric data and material consumption. A typical 30-story public residential building in Hong Kong was examined. The EC and OC of the case building were calculated as 561 kg CO2e/m2 and 50.18 kg CO2e/m2/yr, respectively. Different low carbon design scenarios were identified from the literature review and the semi-structured interviews with designers and contractors. Results indicate that low carbon concrete is an effective approach for not only reducing the EC by 5%-15%, but saving a mild percentage of OC, and is therefore encouraged. However, changing the thickness of external walls leads to a very limited life cycle carbon reduction (0.99%). Lower U-value of envelopes is recommended as 2.84% and 2.89% life cycle carbon is reduced when adopting insulations for external walls and triple-glazing windows. The findings are valuable for examining the relationships between EC and OC and can support low carbon building decision-making.