Analysing the cumulative energy demand of external bearing walls

Abstract

The assessment of environmental properties of buildings is now commonly using a life cycle analysis (LCA). Due to the rapidly evolving construction industry, LCA research is carried out in many areas, from building materials and components to overall building system. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool used to compare environmental impacts along the life cycle of products or services. This paper presents an evaluation and comparing of two external bearing walls of different material compositions regarding the materials´ total energy consumption within the cradle to gate boundaries. Impact categories were calculated by the software SimaPro using Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) method and applying the Ecoinvent database. A renewable (biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, water) and non-renewable (fossil, nuclear, biomass) energies were under consideration. The composition with brick as a core wall material achieved worse results in all categories than the wall composition with aerated concrete block.