Abstract
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a scientific method for evaluating the environmental impact of products. Standards provide a general framework for conducting an LCA study and calculation rules specifically for buildings. The challenge is to design energy-efficient buildings that have a low environmental impact, reasonable costs, and high thermal comfort as these are usually conflicting aspects. Efficient mathematical optimisation algorithms can be applied to such engineering problems. In this paper, a framework for automated optimisation is described, and it is applied to a multi-story residential building case study in two locations, Portugal and Hungary. The objectives are to minimise the life cycle environmental impacts and costs. The results indicate that optimum solutions are found at a higher cost but lower global warming potential for Portugal than for Hungary. Optimum solutions have walls with a thermal transmittance in the intervals of 0.29–0.39 and 0.06–0.19 W/m2K for Portugal and Hungary, respectively. Multi-objective optimisation algorithms can be successfully applied to find solutions with low environmental impact and an eco-efficient thermal envelope.
Highlights
The construction and retrofit of buildings can cause substantial environmental impacts [1] due to their significant consumption of energy (40%) and materials and energyrelated greenhouse gas emissions (36%; [2])
The only exception is cork that has a very low impact in Portugal but the third-highest impact in Hungary [56]
Due to the same reason, the cost of Insulating Cork Board (ICB) is extremely high in Hungary compared to other insulation materials, and it is expected that this material will dominate in the optimisation
Summary
The construction and retrofit of buildings can cause substantial environmental impacts [1] due to their significant consumption of energy (40%) and materials and energyrelated greenhouse gas emissions (36%; [2]). The potential environmental impact caused by buildings can be evaluated with the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Optimisation algorithms are applied in an increasing number in research to assist the design of sustainable buildings [5,6,7]. The number of research papers focusing on the minimisation of life cycle environmental impact is still limited but rapidly growing [14,15,16]. Both environmental impact and costs depend on factors that may vary from country to country, even within the European Union. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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