Abstract
Envelope insulation and protection is an important technical solution to reduce energy consumption, exterior damage, and environmental impacts in buildings. Thermal insulation tiles are used simultaneously as thermal insulation of the building envelope and protection material of under layers in flat roofs systems. The purpose of this research is to assess the environmental impacts of the life cycle of thermal insulation tiles for flat roofs. This research presents the up-to-date “cradle to gate” environmental performance of thermal insulation tiles for the environmental categories and life-cycle stages defined in European standards on environmental evaluation of building. The results presented in this research were based on site-specific data from a Portuguese factory and resulted from a consistent methodology that is here fully described, including the raw materials extraction and production, and the modelling of energy and transport processes at the production stage of thermal insulation tiles. These results reflect the weight of the raw-materials within the production process of thermal insulation tiles in all environmental categories and show that some life cycle stages, such as transportation of raw materials (A2) and packaging and packaging waste (A3.1 and A3.3, respectively), may not be discarded in a cradle to gate study of a construction material because they can make a significant contribution to some environmental categories. Moreover, complementary results regarding the economic, environmental, and energy performance Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of flat roofs solutions incorporating the thermal insulation tiles studied showed that the influence of the economic costs on the total aggregated costs of these solutions is much higher than that of the environmental costs due to the lower environmental costs of the thermal insulation tiles at the product stage (A1–A3). These costs influenced the corresponding percentage of the environmental costs (between 14% and 18%) and the percentage of the economic costs (between 70% and 75%) in the total aggregated (environmental, economic, and energy) net present value (NPV). Finally, a complementary “cradle to cradle” environmental LCA discussion is presented including the following additional life cycle stages: maintenance and replacement (B2–B4), operational energy use (B6), and end-of-life stage and benefits and loads beyond the system boundary (C1–C4 and D).
Highlights
The consumption of energy worldwide contributes to increase pollution, environmental degradation, and greenhouse gases emissions
This section presents the “cradle to gate” environmental impacts of thermal insulation tiles and some complementary results to assess the economic, environmental, and energy life cycle performance of different flat roofs solutions integrating the thermal insulation tiles studied as insulation and protection material
Not being the main focus of this paper, the results showed that the environmental performance of flat roofs with thermal insulation tiles is generically better than those solutions using XPS and EPS as insulation layer and other paving products in the protection layer in almost all environmental impact categories, mainly due to lower environmental impacts at the product stage (A1–A3) of these solutions [7]
Summary
The consumption of energy worldwide contributes to increase pollution, environmental degradation, and greenhouse gases emissions. The building sector is responsible for a relatively large percentage (30% to 40%) of the overall primary energy consumption, and buildings are responsible for over 30% of the global CO2 emissions [1]. These figures are similar within the European Union (EU—see Table A1 in Appendix A for the list of abbreviations used in this paper), where buildings contribute to more than 40% of the overall energy consumption, contributing in a considerable way (about 35%) to CO2 emissions [2]. Flat roofs, are one of the envelope’s building components that have an important role in terms of thermal exchanges with the envelope’s building components that have an important role in terms of thermal exchanges with the exterior and directly related with the energy consumption of the building. Flat exterior and that directly with therole energy consumption of exchanges the building
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