Building Simplified Life Cycle CO2 Emissions Assessment Tool (B‐SCAT) to Support Low‐Carbon Building Design in South Korea

Abstract

Abstract:Various tools that assess life cycle CO 2 (LCCO 2 ) emissions are currently being developed throughout the international community. However, most building LCCO 2 emissions assessment tools use a bill of quantities (BOQ), which is calculated after starting a building's construction. Thus, it is difficult to assess building LCCO 2 emissions during the early design phase, even though this capability would be highly effective in reducing LCCO 2 emissions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a Building Simplified LCCO 2 emissions Assessment Tool (B-SCAT) for application in the early design phase of low-carbon buildings in South Korea, in order to facilitate efficient decision-making. To that end, in the construction stage, the BOQ and building drawings were analyzed, and a database of quantities and equations describing the finished area were conducted for each building element. In the operation stage, the "Korea Energy Census Report" and the "Korea Building Energy Efficiency Rating Certification System" were analyzed, and three kinds of models to evaluate CO 2 emissions were proposed. These analyses enabled the development of the B-SCAT. A case study compared the assessment results performed using the B-SCAT against a conventional assessment model based on the actual BOQ of the evaluated building. These values closely approximated the conventional assessment results with error rates of less than 3%.

Reduction Strategies for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from High-Speed Railway Station Buildings in a Cold Climate Zone of China

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Analysis of Embodied Environmental Impacts of Korean Apartment Buildings Considering Major Building Materials

“…In the dissolution process, the EIs of the equipment and machinery used for building demolition are assessed through fuel efficiency (diesel consumption per unit of work) information of the demolition machines after the number of machines is calculated on the basis of the amount of waste material generated in the demolition process. In this study, it was assumed that both crushers (0.7 m 3 ) and backhoes (1.0 m 3 ) were used as demolition equipment [19] and that the amount of waste material generated in the demolition process was the same as the input quantities of the six major building materials in the production stage.…”

“…As technologies to reduce the OEIs of buildings have been commercialized, research on the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of buildings-which considers the reduction in the OEIs of buildings as well as in the embodied environmental impacts (EEIs) caused by the production, construction, maintenance, and end-of-life stages of the building materials used-has been emphasized recently [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. This is because additional building materials may be necessary for energy-efficient buildings compared with conventional buildings, thus increasing EEIs, but decreasing OEIs [17].…”

Developing a Green Building Index (GBI) Certification System to Effectively Reduce Carbon Emissions in South Korea’s Building Industry

“…In particular, the building industry, which is reportedly responsible for more than 32% of global carbon emissions [6][7][8], is encouraging green building construction, which reduces carbon emissions, creates economic profits, and increases the occupancy's amenity and health by reducing building material quantities and operational energy consumption [9,10]. As part of a strategy designed to encourage green building construction, the building industry is currently in the process of strengthening the certification criteria for building life cycle assessment (LCA) in conjunction with the development of a green building certification system [11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The building LCA criteria quantitatively evaluate potential…”