Pre-use phase LCA of a multi-story residential building: Can greenhouse gas emissions be used as a more general environmental performance indicator?

Abstract

Both the construction and use of buildings cause significant environmental pressures. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions imposed by buildings have been studied rather extensively, but less is known about other impacts. Still, climate change is only one harmful impact driven by buildings. Furthermore, no studies exist about how the other impacts are correlated with GHG emissions in the building context, and thus to what extent GHGs could be utilized as a more general environmental performance indicator. This paper fills these gaps by presenting a life cycle assessment of the pre-use phase of a modern concrete-element residential building with a very comprehensive life cycle inventory (LCI). The focus of the study is on the comparison of the accumulation of different environmental impacts relative to GHGs. The accumulation is analyzed from two perspectives common to building LCAs: building systems and different construction materials. The ReCiPe midpoint assessment method is utilized to reach wide impact category coverage. The study shows how GHGs act as a relatively good indicator for eight impact categories, but not for the others. The study also depicts that a very high coverage in the LCI must be reached to capture the majority of the different impacts. Many materials and building systems are considered non-relevant and are often excluded from building LCAs, which are in fact of great importance in many impact categories.

Environmental Impact Assessment of a School Building in Iceland Using LCA-Including the Effect of Long Distance Transport of Materials

“…The contributions of the study to the building pre-use LCA In all cases, concrete and steel accounted for a significant share of total GWP, ranging from 10% to 56% for concrete and 9% to 39% for steel. This is also fully consistent with the finding of [29] that materials that are in terms of weight considered unimportant, those often left outside the assessment scopes, can have significant overall impact even in the GWP category, and much more so in other categories. If estimating according to the results of Heinonen et al [29], the magnitude of the cutoffs in this study due to the boundary selection was 20%-25% in GWP.…”

“…This is also fully consistent with the finding of [29] that materials that are in terms of weight considered unimportant, those often left outside the assessment scopes, can have significant overall impact even in the GWP category, and much more so in other categories. If estimating according to the results of Heinonen et al [29], the magnitude of the cutoffs in this study due to the boundary selection was 20%-25% in GWP. It is thus important to interpret the results correctly and to compare the overall levels of the results in different categories to studies with wider scopes.…”

“…To interpret the results, it should be considered that, surface materials, electric systems, and plumbing as well as the emissions from the manufacturing work, operation and end of life are not calculated in this analysis. AS mentioned, if assessed according to the cutoff estimations of [29] for GWP impact, the cutoff is 20%-25%, but at least as important in other categories and up to 50% in HT. This draws attention to the correct interpretation of LCA results.…”

Impacts of FDI Renewable Energy Technology Spillover on China’s Energy Industry Performance

“…[50,51] total human resources of the enterprises the sum of "employed persons of industrial enterprises above designated size by region" industry output [52,53] the total product value of energy industry in a certain period of time the sum of "gross output value of industrial enterprises above designated size by region" EN energy consumption [54,55] consumption of coal, oil, natural gas, water and electricity in production process the sum of "energy consumption by region" CO 2 emissions [56][57][58] CO 2 emissions in production process IPCC based on the sum of "coal consumption by region", "oil consumption by region" and "natural gas consumption by region"…”

“…Statistical Yearbook solid waste quantity [56][57][58] solid waste generated in the production process of energy industry the sum of "general industrial solid waste utilization and disposal by region" China Statistical Yearbook on Environment wastewater quantity [56][57][58] wastewater generated in the production process of energy industry the sum of "industrial wastewater disposal by region" IN R&D fund [59][60][61] R&D expenditures for the energy industry the sum of "R&D funds of industrial enterprises above designated size by region" China Statistical Yearbook on Science and Technology R&D personnel [59,62,63] number of R&D personnel for the energy industry the sum of "R&D personnel of industrial enterprises above designated size by region" new product output [59,64,65] new product output value of energy industry the sum of "gross output value of new products of large and medium sized industrial enterprises by region" Notes: All the data are selected from "coal mining and washing industry", "petroleum and natural gas extraction industry", "petroleum processing, coking, nucleus fuel processing industry", "electric power, heat power production and supply industry", "gas production and distribution industry" and "water production and distribution industry" of China's yearbook. EC denotes economic performance, EN denotes environmental performance, and IN denotes innovative performance.…”