Abstract
Through a systematic study, this paper conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) consisting of evaluation of both embodied and operational emissions of different building retrofitting scenarios for a typical office building, located in Norway. LCA analysis was performed via the OneClick LCA tool. The emissions associated with the operational energy use were evaluated for both the reference and optimized building energy models developed in the IDA-ICE models from our previous studies. These models included two different HVAC systems: an all-air (AA) system equipped with a demand control ventilation (DCV) and a hydronic system with the radiator space heating (RSH) and a constant air volume (CAV) ventilation system. The findings showed that, through retrofitting measures, the net total emissions could be reduced up to 52%, from 1336–637 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq)/m2, which was achieved for the life cycle cost (LCC) optimal scenario equipped with the AA system. The share of operational energy use (B6) in the total CO2-eq emissions was around 77% for the reference case, whereas it was around 43–46% for the retrofitting scenarios. The most embodied CO2-eq emitted stages of the LCA through retrofitting concerned the product stage (19–23%), transport to construction site (24–31%), and the end-of-life service (around 25%). The findings confirmed that it was more environmentally friendly to further re-insulate the other parts of the building envelope instead of ground floor, as the latter retrofitting scenario was accompanied with a large increase of embodied emissions.
Highlights
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global temperature has risen by roughly 1 ◦C since the in dustrial age, because of human actions
De Wolf et al [16] signified this by analyzing the data obtained from over 200 buildings and the results showed that the amount of building embodied CO2 emission equivalent (CO2-eq) varies in the range of 150–600 kg CO2-eq/m2 per year of building lifetime
Ylmen et al [22] investigated the embodied and operational carbon emissions from HVAC systems in an office building in Sweden and the results showed that 38 kg CO2-eq/m2 was emitted in the pro duction phase and 100 kg CO2-eq/m2 in the operation phase
Summary
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global temperature has risen by roughly 1 ◦C since the in dustrial age, because of human actions. Asdrubali et al [18] evaluated the energy use and carbon payback time of different retrofit scenarios for a school building in Northern Italy They applied the LCA method for calculating environmental impact of the building for lifetime of 50 years. In this paper, we conducted a feasibility study through adapting a cradle to grave method to assess the environmental impacts associated with GHGs generated due to applying extra/new materials and systems, and the resulting reduction of building energy use, by applying several retrofit measures for a typical and existing Norwegian office building. The LCA method was adopted to obtain science based information about the environmental impact of different retrofit mea sures of an office building built in the 1980s, in terms of GHG emissions (kgCO2 − eq/m2floor area), implemented according to the Norwegian standard NS 3720 [52]. Afterwards, we calculated the CO2-eq, using OneClick LCA, for various retrofit scenarios in different phase of the building life cycle
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