Whole-Building LCA and Green Building Rating Systems: Exploratory Review of the Available Tools

Abstract

There is a growing interest in integrating Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into building design decision-making, due to LCA’s comprehensive, systemic approach to environmental evaluation. Many green building rating systems use LCA to various degrees. In this paper, we have performed a comparative study to evaluate the tools available to designers at different design stages and the means to meet the various green building rating systems requirements. The evaluation covers three different LCA software tools available to building designers: Kieran Timberlake’s Tally, Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings, and SimaPro. The software tools vary in key aspects such as intended users (e.g., LCA experts or novices), design stage where they can be used, and time. The evaluated LCA tools also varied significantly in the possibility of their use in early design, decision-making, and integration with Building Information Modeling (BIM). Some of the applications rely on a bill of materials that change constantly in design alterations. A whole-building LCA of a large building using Kieran Timberlake’s Tally was completed with future work including completing LCAs using Athena and SimaPro. The case study was highly influenced by the building type (i.e., healthcare facility) and its intense operational energy requirements. Conventional energy efficiency measures like increasing the lighting efficiency exceeded by far what can be done to mitigate the embedded impact of construction materials. We discuss in this ongoing research recommendations to advance the requirements of the baseline building and addressing the operational phase in more comprehensive framework.