Environmental Performance of Green Building Code and Certification Systems

Abstract

We examined the potential life-cycle environmental impact reduction of three green building code and certification (GBCC) systems: LEED, ASHRAE 189.1, and IgCC. A recently completed whole-building life cycle assessment (LCA) database of NIST was applied to a prototype building model specification by NREL. TRACI 2.0 of EPA was used for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The results showed that the baseline building model generates about 18 thousand metric tons CO2-equiv. of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and consumes 6 terajoule (TJ) of primary energy and 328 million liter of water over its life-cycle. Overall, GBCC-compliant building models generated 0% to 25% less environmental impacts than the baseline case (average 14% reduction). The largest reductions were associated with acidification (25%), human health-respiratory (24%), and global warming (GW) (22%), while no reductions were observed for ozone layer depletion (OD) and land use (LU). The performances of the three GBCC-compliant building models measured in life-cycle impact reduction were comparable. A sensitivity analysis showed that the comparative results were reasonably robust, although some results were relatively sensitive to the behavioral parameters, including employee transportation and purchased electricity during the occupancy phase (average sensitivity coefficients 0.26-0.29).

Environmental and natural resource implications of sustainable urban infrastructure systems

“…While these certifications vary in terms of their emphasis on energy, water or indoor air quality, most definitions include some standard for energy and water efficiency. In an LCA of green building certifications, Suh et al (2014) constructed a parametric LCA model for a three storey commercial building and found that the environmental benefits achieved by energy savings during the use-phase of green buildings outweighed the impacts of additional insulation and other materials requirements for GHG emissions and most other impact categories. Our analysis builds on Suh et al (2014) using region-specific parameters.…”

LEED v4: Where Are We Now? Critical Assessment through the LCA of an Office Building Using a Low Impact Energy Consumption Mix

“…A few studies have evaluated the influence of LEED on building LCA impacts (Suh et al. ; Humbert et al. ; Suzer ; Wu et al.…”

“…In fact, some LEED scores did not yield a reduction of the overall LCA impacts (Al‐Ghamdi and Bilec ; Suh et al. ; Humbert et al. ).…”

Factors Affecting Green Residential Building Development: Social Network Analysis

“…Green building (GB), as one of the best practices of sustainable development in the construction industry, has drawn much attention [5][6][7][8]. Many researches of GB have been analyzed from different aspects, for example: Technological innovation [9][10][11], energy saving [12][13][14], risk management [15][16][17][18], influential factors for development [19][20][21], policy incentives and regulations [22][23][24], and economical benefit [25][26][27] etc.…”