Life cycle assessment of the building industry: An overview of two decades of research (1995–2018)

Bahramian, Majid; Yetilmezsoy, Kaan

doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2020.109917

Cited by 135 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 269 publications

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“…Regarding the construction industry, LCA is used mainly to assess the environmental performance of buildings through their life stages, including emissions from building materials, the construction process, the use of energy and demolition [83][84][85][86]. Therefore, it is often applied to building certification systems and building benchmarking [87][88][89][90] or used as a tool in decision processes towards sustainable building or neighborhood design [91][92][93].…”

Section: Eco-efficiency Concept and Life Cycle Assessment To Measure mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

et al. 2020

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Improving the eco-efficiency of food systems is one of the major global challenges faced by the modern world. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are commonly regarded to be less harmful to the environment, among various reasons, due to their organizational distribution and thus the shortened physical distance between primary producers and final consumers. In this paper, we empirically test this hypothesis, by assessing and comparing the environmental impacts of short and long food supply chains. Based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, we calculate eco-efficiency indicators for nine types of food distribution chains. The analysis is performed on a sample of 428 short and long food supply chains from six European countries. Our results indicate that, on average, long food supply chains may generate less negative environmental impacts than short chains (in terms of fossil fuel energy consumption, pollution, and GHG emissions) per kg of a given product. The values of eco-efficiency indicators display a large variability across analyzed chains, and especially across different types of SFSCs. The analysis shows that the environmental impacts of the food distribution process are not only determined by the geographical distance between producer and consumer, but depend on numerous factors, including the supply chain infrastructure.

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Section: Eco-efficiency Concept and Life Cycle Assessment To Measure mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

et al. 2020

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“…The selection of included life cycle modules (Table 1) for LCA and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) depart in the common LCA and LCC practice for new buildings in Denmark as implemented in the national tools LCAbyg [43], LCCbyg [44], and the Danish DGNB program [45]. The incomplete life cycle applied for LCC and LCA, i.e., not including repair or maintenance, is common in building LCA [46]. The following study has the objective of comparing performance and cost of renovation solutions, and the renovated building is chosen to start with a new life cycle, while omitting the existing material's end-of-life impacts and cost.…”

Section: Life Cycle Assessment (Lca)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Objective Optimization of Building Life Cycle Performance. A Housing Renovation Case Study in Northern Europe

Montana¹,

Kanafani

Wittchen

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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While the operational energy use of buildings is often regulated in current energy saving policies, their embodied greenhouse gas emissions still have a considerable mitigation potential. The study aims at developing a multi-objective optimization method for design and renovation of buildings incorporating the operational and embodied energy demands, global warming potential, and costs as objective functions. The optimization method was tested on the renovation of an apartment building in Denmark, mainly focusing envelope improvements as roof and exterior wall insulation and windows. Cellulose insulation has been the predominant result, together with fiber cement or aluminum-based cladding and 2-layered glazing. The annual energy demand has been reduced from 166.4 to a range between 76.5 and 83.7 kWh/(m2 y) in the optimal solutions. The fact that the legal requirements of 70 kWh/(m2 y) are nearly met without building service improvements indicates that energy requirements can be fulfilled without compromising greenhouse gas emissions and cost. Since the method relies on standard national performance reporting tools, the authors believe that this study is a preliminary step towards more cost-efficient and low-carbon building renovations by utilizing multi-optimization techniques.

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“…Indeed, engineered wood products have recently experienced annual growth rates between 2.5% and 15% [101], with a range of studies showing that buildings with wooden structures have a lower carbon footprint than buildings with other types of structures (see reviews in, e.g., Reference [57,[102][103][104][105]).…”

Section: Cement/concretementioning

confidence: 99%

Roadmap for Decarbonization of the Building and Construction Industry—A Supply Chain Analysis Including Primary Production of Steel and Cement

et al. 2020

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Sweden has committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net-zero by 2045. Around 20% of Sweden’s annual CO2 emissions arise from manufacturing, transporting, and processing of construction materials for construction and refurbishment of buildings and infrastructure. In this study, material and energy flows for building and transport infrastructure construction is outlined, together with a roadmap detailing how the flows change depending on different technical and strategical choices. By matching short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions, these pathways make it possible to identify key decision points and potential synergies, competing goals, and lock-in effects. The results show that it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions associated with construction of buildings and transport infrastructure by 50% to 2030 applying already available measures, and reach close to zero emissions by 2045, while indicating that strategic choices with respect to process technologies and energy carriers may have different implications on energy use and CO2 emissions over time. The results also illustrate the importance of intensifying efforts to identify and manage both soft and hard barriers and the importance of simultaneously acting now by implementing available measures (e.g., material efficiency and material/fuel substitution measures), while actively planning for long-term measures (low-CO2 steel or cement).

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Life cycle assessment of the building industry: An overview of two decades of research (1995–2018)

Cited by 135 publications

References 269 publications

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

Are Short Food Supply Chains More Environmentally Sustainable than Long Chains? A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Eco-Efficiency of Food Chains in Selected EU Countries

Multi-Objective Optimization of Building Life Cycle Performance. A Housing Renovation Case Study in Northern Europe

Roadmap for Decarbonization of the Building and Construction Industry—A Supply Chain Analysis Including Primary Production of Steel and Cement

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