Abstract
Residential buildings are responsible for a considerable portion of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Correspondingly, many attempts have been made across the world to minimize energy consumption in this sector via regulations and building codes. The focus of these regulations has mainly been on reducing operational energy use, whereas the impacts of buildings’ embodied energy are frequently excluded. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the energy performance of buildings via a life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) approach. The increasing amount of research has however caused the issue of a variation in results presented by LCEA studies, in which apparently similar case studies exhibited different results. This paper aims to identify the main sources of variation in LCEA studies by critically analyzing 26 studies representing 86 cases in 12 countries. The findings indicate that the current trend of LCEA application in residential buildings suffers from significant inaccuracy accruing from incomplete definitions of the system boundary, in tandem with the lack of consensus on measurements of operational and embodied energies. The findings call for a comprehensive framework through which system boundary definition for calculations of embodied and operational energies can be standardized.
Highlights
The residential sector is responsible for consuming 27% of energy and emitting 17% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide [1,2]
Research into investigating embodied energy using the life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) approach has been increasing in recent years, with numerous detailed case studies of individual buildings developed by academics
The approaches of the reviewed studies to defining system boundaries were analyzed with respect to excluding stage(s) from the building’s life cycle, building components considered for embodied energy calculation, parameters considered for operational energy calculations, building life span, and the key assumptions
Summary
The residential sector is responsible for consuming 27% of energy and emitting 17% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide [1,2]. Due to the significance of this sector in mitigating global climate change, considerable efforts have been undertaken across many countries to reduce energy consumption in residential buildings by legislating various regulations and building codes. These regulations are mainly in place to minimize the environmental impacts associated with energy use from heating, cooling, and lighting [4]. Research into investigating embodied energy using the life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) approach has been increasing in recent years, with numerous detailed case studies of individual buildings developed by academics
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