Life cycle assessment of building materials: Comparative analysis of energy and environmental impacts and evaluation of the eco-efficiency improvement potential

Zabalza, Ignacio; Capilla, Antonio Valero; Usón, Alfonso Aranda

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2010.12.002

Cited by 940 publications

(303 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…That same greatness is observed in the environmental loads that arise from the building industry, extensively documented by authors like Bribrián, Capilla and Usón (2011).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Methodological Discussion and Piloting of Lca-Based Environmental Indicators for Product Stage Assessment of Brazilian Buildings

Saade

Silva

2014

Gest. Tecnol. Proj.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA)'s Annex 57 was established to advance on evaluation of embodied energy and GHG emissions for building construction. Its activities include recommendation of common calculation methods and disclosure of regional benchmarks. Process-based, input-output or hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) can support such calculations. Identification of the major products that describe key building typologies plays a strategic role in the tasks of streamlining indicators' monitoring scope and LCI data gathering in contexts with little LCA practice consolidation. Given these motivations and backdrops, our main goals are (i) to calculate a selected set of LCA-based indicators to synthetically describe environmental performance of construction products for three functionally equivalent case studies; (ii) to detect the major contributors to embodied energy (EE) and emissions (EGWP); and (iii) to examine the implications of considering embodied CO 2 versus total GHG emissions. The selected metrics include -besides EE and EGWP targeted by Annex 57 -the blue water footprint (bWF), non-renewable primary material consumption (NRc) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions. Production cycle modeling used previously collected national data, as well as secondary data extracted from national and international literature or adapted from international databases whenever considered as reasonably similar to Brazilian processes. EE and EGWP results were calculated using the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) method and the CML 2001 baseline v. 2.05 method, respectively, and are presented for the top contributing products. NRc, bWF and VOC calculations were directly derived from the inventories and discussed in more detail for cement and concrete. Around 80% of the total embodied energy was related to seven construction products, while four of them also responded for around 80% of embodied GWP. Enlarging the database to encompass ten core products would increase coverage to over 93%. For cement and concrete, partial replacement of clinker by ground granulated blast furnace slag brought substantial reductions in the calculated values for all indicators but bWF, which unveils the effect of the water-intensive granulation process. Further research is expected to advance in LCI development and validation to enable the use of life cycle-based metrics to support decision-making within the national building sector. RESUMO O Anexo 57 da Agência Internacional de Energia (AIE) foi estabelecido para avançar na avaliação de energia e emissões de GEE associadas à construção de edificações. A avaliação de ciclo de vida auxilia no cálculo destes indicadores. Identificar os principais produtos de construção que descrevam tipologias construtivas-chaves tem um papel estratégico na otimização do monitoramento de indicadores e construção de inventários em contextos com práticas de ACV pouco consolidadas. Este artigo é dirigido por estas motivações. Nossos objetivos são: (i) calcular um conjunto selecionado de indicadores...

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“…That same greatness is observed in the environmental loads that arise from the building industry, extensively documented by authors like Bribrián, Capilla and Usón (2011).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Methodological Discussion and Piloting of Lca-Based Environmental Indicators for Product Stage Assessment of Brazilian Buildings

Saade

Silva

2014

Gest. Tecnol. Proj.

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“…From the total building materials emissions (75%), 28% are due to insulation and sealing components, it should be noticed that the impact of conventional insulation materials, as baseline building with a high level of industrial processing-such as EPS-is clearly higher than the impact of natural materials such as cork, wood fiber and sheep's wool, or recycled ones such as cellulose fiber [43]. So, while EPS insulation or polyurethane produces emissions on average 3.5 kg CO 2 -e/kg with high consumptions of fossil fuels, some insulation materials such as sheep's wool, could reduce its impact up to 98%.…”

Section: Carbon Footprint Of Buildings Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Link between Low Carbon Reductions Strategies and Its Performance in the Context of Climate Change: A Carbon Footprint of a Wood-Frame Residential Building in Quebec, Canada

2018

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Abstract:The design and study of low carbon buildings is a major concern in a modern economy due to high carbon emissions produced by buildings and its effects on climate change. Studies have investigated (CFP) Carbon Footprint of buildings, but there remains a need for a strong analysis that measure and quantify the overall degree of GHG emissions reductions and its relationship with the effect on climate change mitigation. This study evaluates the potential of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the building sector by evaluating the (CFP) of four hotpots approaches defined in line with commonly carbon reduction strategies, also known as mitigation strategies. CFP framework is applied to compare the (CC) climate change impact of mitigation strategies. A multi-story timber residential construction in Quebec City (Canada) was chosen as a baseline scenario. This building has been designed with the idea of being a reference of sustainable development application in the building sector. In this scenario, the production of materials and construction (assembly, waste management and transportation) were evaluated. A CFP that covers eight actions divided in four low carbon strategies, including: low carbon materials, material minimization, reuse and recycle materials and adoption of local sources and use of biofuels were evaluated. The results of this study shows that the used of prefabricated technique in buildings is an alternative to reduce the CFP of buildings in the context of Quebec. The CC decreases per m 2 floor area in baseline scenario is up to 25% than current buildings. If the benefits of low carbon strategies are included, the timber structures can generate 38% lower CC than the original baseline scenario. The investigation recommends that CO 2 eq emissions reduction in the design and implementation of residential constructions as climate change mitigation is perfectly feasible by following different working strategies. It is concluded that if the four strategies were implemented in current buildings they would have environmental benefits by reducing its CFP. The reuse wood wastes into production of particleboard has the greatest environmental benefit due to temporary carbon storage.

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“…Several studies have shown that HWPs use less energy, and therefore they have a lower carbon footprint than other building materials such as steel and concrete (Sutton 2003;Zabalza Bribián et al 2011), which makes wood products an interesting option in the mitigation efforts against climate change, especially in the construction and energy sectors (Lucon et al 2014). In addition, forest industry manufacturing is a divergent production system, with a large array of coproducts (Gaudreault et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cradle-to-Gate Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of the Portfolio of an Innovative Forest Products Manufacturing Unit

Laurent¹,

Ménard²,

Lesage³

et al. 2016

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Life cycle assessment of building materials: Comparative analysis of energy and environmental impacts and evaluation of the eco-efficiency improvement potential

Cited by 940 publications

References 35 publications

Methodological Discussion and Piloting of Lca-Based Environmental Indicators for Product Stage Assessment of Brazilian Buildings

Methodological Discussion and Piloting of Lca-Based Environmental Indicators for Product Stage Assessment of Brazilian Buildings

Evaluating the Link between Low Carbon Reductions Strategies and Its Performance in the Context of Climate Change: A Carbon Footprint of a Wood-Frame Residential Building in Quebec, Canada

Cradle-to-Gate Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of the Portfolio of an Innovative Forest Products Manufacturing Unit

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