Life cycle assessment of italian residential windows: sensitivity of analysis

Abstract

Product Sustainability assessment is becoming ever more critical in the global competition; this is particularly true for building sector. This paper faces the problem of the analysis of sensitivity of this task by referring to a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) case of a PVC window for civil buildings applications. Sensitivity has been appreciated by referring to two functional units to evaluate the quality of the environmental impacts by relating it to the window features: per piece and per square meter of see-through surface. It resulted that the sustainability impact calculated per square meter changes considerably with the change of the type of window. This sensitivity analysis leads to propose a new criterion of the analysis to provide a reliable assessment approach to be used for the evaluation of the environmental performance of products. The difference between the values of thermal transmittance measured and calculated is inferior to 5%, which it is an absolutely optimal value.