A LCA-based Optimization Method of Green Ecological Building Envelopes: A Case Study in China

Abstract

Climate change and resource depletion have led to the destruction of the environment, making it more urgent to address the irreversible environmental effects caused by construction industry. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic analytical method applied to evaluate buildings since 1990, covering every phase of buildings’ whole life cycle. However, the application and influence of LCA has been restricted due to the time-consuming procedures, the high cost of software, the hysteresis and limited samples in academic studies. This research takes a light-frame industrialized housing product as a prototype, collects a variety of common building envelope materials, evaluates the life cycle energy of 1344 possible wall assemblies by using C# language, and investigates the influences of different materials. The results show that construction energy accounts for 65.97% to 68.41% of life cycle energy, which is the largest part in the whole life span, much higher than the proportion of operation energy. Meanwhile, both life cycle energy and construction energy are strongly influenced by the outer layer materials of the building’s envelope, and the operation energy is closely related to the thermal insulation materials. In addition, this paper also shows a feasible methodology that could be adjusted to estimate various life cycle performance (including life cycle energy, life cycle carbon emissions, life cycle cost assessment, etc.) automatically in the architectural design stage and guide the buildings’ design more effectively.