An overall methodology to define reference values for building sustainability parameters

Abstract

tThe paper presents a methodology to define reference values regarding building environmental impacts,energy outputs, and global costs. Four exemplary Italian residential categories were analyzed, focusingon the recent existing stock and on the most common kinds of houses. Buildings were subjected to LifeCycle Assessment (LCA) analyses, through SimaPro software, in order to define specific values linkedto the environmental impacts and to the total energy spent. The amount of energy related to the usephase, including heating, domestic hot water, and cooling systems, was estimated by using the energysimulation program EnergyPlus. Building economic performance was analyzed through Life Cycle Costing(LCC) analyses, with the global cost approach. The results showed that the use phase implied the largestcontribution to the environmental and energy impacts; instead the pre-use phase was predominant inlife cycle costs. Furthermore, since a considerable amount of consistent data was used for this study, theoutcomes could be treated as reliable for the definition of benchmarks. For instance, the results indicatedthat, during the whole life cycle, Italian residential buildings could spend around 140 kWh/m2, with aproduction of about 35 kg CO2eq/m2each year, reaching a global cost of nearly 1420 D/m2

Combining Life Cycle Environmental and Economic Assessments in Building Energy Renovation Projects

“…The results obtained for NPC are overall comparable to those of similar studies [55,56], especially with respect to the cost category contribution. However, LCC studies are very specific and related to the case study, as well as to the assumptions for the main economic parameters.…”

Embodied energy of conventional load-bearing walls versus natural stabilized earth blocks

“…In other cases, research is done by means of a LCA theoretical study through a literature review [22,[38][39][40][41]. Moreover, other researchers limit the LCA applicable results to a specific climate area [42] or a specific regulatory environment [40].…”

Green Public Procurement and Construction Sector: EPD and LCA Based Benchmarks of the Whole-Building

“…The benchmarking methods were all based on the statistical analysis and interpretation of LCA data. In the analysed case-studies, LCA-based benchmarks were related to healthcare buildings in Portugal [8], for school buildings in South Korea [9] and for residential buildings in Italy [12], France [11] and Germany. In order to set LCA-based benchmarks for construction products, a reference sample composed by eight construction product categories was processed, categories are also contained in CAMs criteria (cement, bricks, wood-based materials, steel, gypsum plasterboards, glass wool panels, stone wool panels and ceramic tiles).…”

“…The LCA system boundaries for the whole-building benchmark should be cradle-to-grave. Based on a statistical analysis, the median value should be set as the reference LCA benchmark for the whole-buildings [8][9][10][11][12]. As an example the Swedish developer and construction company Folkhem have certified a wooden residential house with the Swedish Program Operator "The International EPD ® System": the EPD assesses the life cycle of a Folkhem's concept building, providing objective and reliable information on the environmental impacts of the whole-building.…”

“…According to the main studies analysed from the literature review [8][9][10][11][12], this study tried to define a benchmarking methodology to set environmental LCA-based benchmarks for building elements, explaining the possible methodological processes. The building elements categories to be considered should refer to construction technologies and practices commonly used, in this work four categories were considered: structure frame, floors, roof, external walls and internal walls.…”