Environmental benchmarks for buildings: a critical literature review

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and actors to assess the global warming potential (GWP) of building activities. In several countries, life cycle based requirements on GWP are currently being incorporated into building regulations. After the establishment of general calculation rules for building LCA, a crucial next step is to evaluate the performance of the specific building design. For this, reference values or benchmarks are needed, but there are several approaches to defining these. This study presents an overview of existing benchmark systems documented in seventeen cases from the IEA EBC Annex 72 project on LCA of buildings. The study characterizes their different types of methodological background and displays the reported values. Full life cycle target values for residential and non-residential buildings are found around 10-20 kg CO2e/m2/y, whereas reference values are found between 20-80 kg CO2e/m2/y. Possible embodied target- and reference values are found between 1-12 kg CO2e/m2/y for both residential and non-residential buildings. Benchmark stakeholders can use the insights from this study to understand the justifications of the background methodological choices and to gain an overview of the level of GWP performance across benchmark systems.

Section: Overview Of Gwp Benchmarks In Usesupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Overview Of Gwp Benchmarks In Usementioning

confidence: 99%

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Existing benchmark systems for assessing global warming potential of buildings – Analysis of IEA EBC Annex 72 cases

Rasmussen

Trigaux

Alsema

et al. 2022

“…To avoid this burden shifting, it is suggested that benchmarks should consider multiple impact indicators [22]. However, such systems are currently less prevalent [23]. For example, the Netherlands are the only country with a mandatory limit value for an aggregated environmental score, which includes eleven impact indicators expressed as one environmental cost [24].…”

Section: Existing Benchmarks In Building Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Development of environmental benchmarks for the Belgian residential building stock

Mouton

Trigaux

Allacker

et al. 2022

Over recent years Belgium has made meaningful effort in adopting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in building practice to improve building environmental performance. Today, architects can compare the environmental performance of different building designs with an online calculation tool that incorporates the national LCA method. However, they are still lacking environmental benchmarks to position themselves within current building practice. Furthermore, such benchmarks play an important role in the development of environmental targets in building regulation. In this research, benchmarks are defined for new residential buildings in Belgium. A bottom-up approach is followed consisting of a statistical analysis of reference buildings to define limit, reference and best practice values. The buildings are based on four representative typologies for Belgium, ranging from detached houses to apartments. Different variants are assessed including various energy performance levels and construction types (solid versus timber). The buildings’ life cycle impacts are calculated including the embodied (material) and operational (energy) impacts. Results are reported both for an aggregated environmental single-score and for Global Warming Potential (GWP). The calculated reference values for life cycle and embodied GWP (20 and 7 kgCO2eq/m2.year) are comparable to existing benchmarks in the literature. The results further highlight that building compactness provides the largest impact reduction, followed by construction type. Finally, limitations are discussed and recommendations are formulated for developing future benchmarks.

“…In order to enable a just and green transition of building construction and operation towards net-zero GHG emissions, policy makers and building design professionals, among other relevant stakeholders, require robust information on the current level of embodied carbon of buildings across Europe, as well as targets and guidance on how to reduce it going forward [8][9][10].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards indicative baseline and decarbonization pathways for embodied life cycle GHG emissions of buildings across Europe

Röck

Allacker

Auinger³

et al. 2022

Buildings’ construction and operation are major contributors to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the substantial reduction of GHG emissions across their full life cycle is required to enable meeting international climate targets. For effective climate change mitigation - as recent studies have shown - a special focus has to be put on lowering embodied GHG emissions, i.e., emissions related to construction production manufacturing and construction processes, maintenance and replacement as well as end-of-life processing. As the importance of reducing embodied GHG emissions rises, so does the need for understanding both the baseline and pathways for reduction across the full life cycle of buildings. In this paper, we offer insights into the data-driven analysis of embodied GHG emissions across the whole life cycle of buildings from recent studies. Our investigation builds on the data collection, processing and harmonisation of around 1.000 building LCA case studies. We offer an integrated perspective on GHG emissions across the life cycle of buildings, considering historical trends, current baselines and indicative reduction pathways for embodied GHG emissions in different countries across Europe. This serves to inform our current ‘decade of action’ and the transformation to a regenerative built environment by 2050.