Emergy-based life cycle assessment (Em-LCA) of multi-unit and single-family residential buildings in Canada

Abstract

Abstract The construction and building process depends on substantial consumption of natural resources with far-reaching impacts beyond their development area. In general, a significant portion of annual resource consumption by the building and construction industry is a result of applying traditional building strategies and practices such as designing and selecting types of development (e.g. multi-unit condo and single-family house, etc.), building materials and structure, heating/cooling systems, and planning renovation and maintenance practices. On the other hand, apart from structural suitability, building developers mostly consider the basic requirements of public owners or private occupants of the buildings, where the main criteria for selecting building strategies are costs, and long-term environmental and socio-economic impacts are generally ignored. The main purpose of this paper is to develop an improved building sustainability assessment framework to measure and integrate different sustainability factors, i.e. long-term environmental upstream and downstream impacts and associated socio-economic costs, in a unified and quantitative basis. The application of the proposed framework has been explained through a case study of single-family houses and multi-unit residential buildings in Canada. A comprehensive framework based on the integration of emergy synthesis and life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed and applied. The results of this research prove that the proposed emergy-based life cycle assessment (Em-LCA) framework offers a practical sustainability assessment tool by providing quantitative and transparent results for informed decision-making.