Abstract
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings constitute a large part of global emissions, where building materials and associated processes make up a significant fraction. These emissions are complicated to evaluate with current methodologies due to, amongst others, the lack of a link between the material inventory data and the aggregated results.This paper presents a method for evaluating and visualizing embodied emission (EE) data of building material production and transport, including replacements, from building life cycle assessments (LCAs). The method introduces a set of metrics that simultaneously serve as a breakdown of the EE results and as an aggregation of the building's inventory data. Furthermore, future emission reductions due to technological improvements are modeled and captured in technological factors for material production and material transport. The material inventory is divided into building subparts for high-resolution analysis of the EE. The metrics and technological factors are calculated separately for each subpart, which can then be evaluated in relation to the rest of the building and be compared to results from other buildings. Two methods for evaluating and visualizing the results are presented to illustrate the method's usefulness in the design process.A case study is used to demonstrate the methods. Key driving factors of EE are identified together with effective mitigation strategies. The inclusion of technological improvements shows a significant reduction in EE (−11.5%), reducing the importance of replacements. Furthermore, the method lays the foundation for further applications throughout the project phases by combining case-specific data with statistical data.
Highlights
Buildings account for 32% of the total global final energy use, 19% of energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and approximately onethird of black carbon emissions [1] and represent one of the critical pieces of a low-carbon future
The methodology presented in this paper addresses several of those by breaking down embodied emission (EE) of material production, transport, and replacements into subparts (BE and material categories (MC)) and a further breakdown into the metrics
We presented a procedure for systematically evaluating and visualizing the EE results of life cycle assessments (LCAs) of buildings’ material production, transport, and replacements
Summary
Buildings account for 32% of the total global final energy use, 19% of energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and approximately onethird of black carbon emissions [1] and represent one of the critical pieces of a low-carbon future. In order to reduce energy use in buildings through country-level regulation, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive [2] and the Energy Efficiency Directive [3] has been estab lished by the European Commission This has motivated research, new building codes, and the development of concepts that provide guidance for high energy efficiency and low carbon emissions from buildings. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a standardized method [4] frequently used to give an overview of how various types of environmental impacts accumulate over the different lifecycle phases and elements of a system. It provides a basis for identifying environmental bottlenecks of specific technologies and for comparing a set of alternative scenarios with respect to environmental impacts [5,6]. LCAs have been increasingly used to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings [7] and is the method of choice for quantifying building-related GHG emissions from raw material extraction, building material production, trans portation, operation, and decommissioning over the building lifetime
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