A hybrid life cycle assessment method for construction

Treloar, Graham; Love, Peter; Faniran, Olusegun O.; Iyer‐Raniga, Usha

doi:10.1080/014461900370898

Cited by 115 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It is clear that the LCA process, originally developed for manufactured products, has still yet to be effectively adapted for large, complex structures that are unique in nature and construction [113]. Many aspects of the life cycle are context specific and the service lives of materials are often long, highly variable or difficult to estimate [114]. Often these aspects of the life cycle have to be assumed and can be determinant in the outcome and product selection.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options for materials used in UK construction

Giesekam

Barrett

Taylor

et al. 2014

Energy and Buildings

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The UK construction industry faces the daunting task of replacing and extending a significant proportion of UK infrastructure, meeting a growing housing shortage and retrofitting millions of homes whilst achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions compatible with the UK's legally binding target of an 80% reduction by 2050. This paper presents a detailed time series of embodied GHG emissions from the construction sector for 1997-2011. This data is used to demonstrate that strategies which focus solely on improving operational performance of buildings and the production efficiencies of domestic material producers will be insufficient to meet sector emission reduction targets.Reductions in the order of 80% will require a substantial decline in the use of materials with carbon-intensive supply chains. A variety of alternative materials, technologies and practices are available and the common barriers to their use are presented based upon an extensive literature survey. Key gaps in qualitative research, data and modelling approaches are also identified. Subsequent discussion highlights the lack of client and regulatory drivers for uptake of alternatives and the ineffective allocation of responsibility for emissions reduction within the industry. Only by addressing and overcoming all these challenges in combination can the construction sector achieve drastic emissions reduction.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options for materials used in UK construction

Giesekam

Barrett

Taylor

et al. 2014

Energy and Buildings

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A general approach is to use IO-LCA to fill in the gaps left by process LCA [10]. As a rule of thumb, hybrid LCA is best employed by using process LCA to analyze the most direct and influential processes, while using IO-LCA for the indirect, upstream processes.…”

Section: Hybrid Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment of Pavements: A Critical Review of Existing Literature and Research

Santero¹,

Masanet²,

Horvath³

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This report provides a critical review of existing literature and modeling tools related to lifecycle assessment (LCA) applied to pavements. The review finds that pavement LCA is an expanding but still limited research topic in the literature, and that the existing body of work exhibits methodological deficiencies and incompatibilities that serve as barriers to the widespread utilization of LCA by pavement engineers and policy makers. This review identifies five key issues in the current body of work: inconsistent functional units, improper system boundaries, imbalanced data for asphalt and cement, use of limited inventory and impact assessment categories, and poor overall utility. This review also identifies common data and modeling gaps in pavement LCAs that should be addressed in future work. These gaps include: the use phase (rolling resistance, albedo, carbonation, lighting, leachate, and tire wear and emissions), asphalt fumes, feedstock energy of bitumen, traffic delay, the maintenance phase, and the end-of-life phase. This review concludes with a comprehensive list of recommendations for future research, which shed light on where improvements in knowledge can be made that will benefit the accuracy and comprehensiveness of pavement LCAs moving forward.

show abstract

“…The third category, hybrid-LCAs, has emerged to combine the strengths of the two presented approaches and to reduce the inherent weaknesses related to them [13,15,16,20]. As described above, the IO and process method have different uncertainties, creating space for a hybrid approach.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The output tables divide the economy into industry-based sectors to fully acknowledge the entire economy. This division is one of the primary sources of uncertainty in input-output-analysis [13,16]. The output tables are averages that may include figures from very different industries, and may not describe the object of the inquiry well.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Potential of Climate Change Mitigation Actions in Three Different City Types in Finland

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:As the effects of global warming have become more evident, ambitious short-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have been set in recent years. Many cities worldwide have adopted an active approach to climate change mitigation, but policy makers are not always knowledgeable of the true effects of their planned mitigation action. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of different mitigation strategies in achieving low-carbon urban communities. The assessment is conducted via means of consumption based hybrid life-cycle assessment, which allows the reduction potential to be analyzed from the perspective of an individual resident of the urban community. The assessed actions represent strategies that are both adopted by the case cities and possible to implement with current best practices in Finland. The four assessed actions comprise: (1) dense urban structure with less private driving; (2) the use of energy production based on renewable sources; (3) new low-energy residential construction; and (4) improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings. The findings show that the effectiveness depends greatly on the type of city, although in absolute terms the most significant reduction potential lies with lowering the fossil fuel dependence of the local energy production.

show abstract

A hybrid life cycle assessment method for construction

Cited by 115 publications

References 8 publications

The greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options for materials used in UK construction

The greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options for materials used in UK construction

Life Cycle Assessment of Pavements: A Critical Review of Existing Literature and Research

Assessing the Potential of Climate Change Mitigation Actions in Three Different City Types in Finland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About