Can life-cycle assessment produce reliable policy guidelines in the building sector?

Säynäjoki, Antti; Heinonen, Jukka; Junnila, Seppo; Horvath, Arpad

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa54ee

Cited by 105 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 70 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to evaluate the environmental load of a product, process, or activity throughout its life cycle and it has also been widely utilized, e.g., in the building sector [8], electronic devices [9], food industry [10][11][12], and waste management systems [13]. Because LCA is a data-intensive method, the availability of reliable data is a fundamental issue for the assessment [8,14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Säynäjoki et al [8], in a comprehensive building sector review, revealed that in general there is a huge variation in the published results which is not explicable by building characteristics but rather by the subjective choices of the LCA practitioner. One key issue, they suggest, is the choice of the LCA tool used for the assessment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Life Cycle Assessment of Two Residential Buildings Using Two Different LCA Database-Software Combinations: Recognizing Uniformities and Inconsistencies

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Traditionally, the emissions embodied in construction materials have not been considered important; however, they are becoming crucial due to the short time-frame in which the emissions should be reduced. Moreover, evaluating the environmental burden of construction materials has proven problematic and the reliability of the reported impact estimates is questionable. More reliable information from the construction sector is thus urgently needed to back and guide decision-making. Currently, the building sector environmental impact assessments predominantly employ commercial software with environmental impact databases and report results without knowledge about the impact of the software/database choice on the results. In this study, estimates for the embodied environmental impacts of residential construction from the two most widely used life cycle assessment (LCA) database-software combinations, ecoinvent with SimaPro software and GaBi, are compared to recognize the uniformities and inconsistencies. The impacts caused by two residential buildings of different types, a concrete-element multi-story residential building and a detached wooden house, both located in Finland, were assessed, including all building systems with a high level of detail. Based on the ReCiPe Midpoint method, fifteen impact categories were estimated and compared. The results confirm that the tool choice significantly affects the outcome. For the whole building, the difference is significant, around 15%, even in the most widely assessed category of Climate Change, and yields results that lean in different directions for the two cases. In the others, the estimates are entirely different, 40% or more in the majority of the categories and up to several thousand percentages of difference. The main conclusion is that extensive work is still urgently needed to improve the reliability of LCA tools in the building sector in order to provide reliable and trustworthy information for policy-making.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Life Cycle Assessment of Two Residential Buildings Using Two Different LCA Database-Software Combinations: Recognizing Uniformities and Inconsistencies

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In a 2017 review Säynäjoki et al [21] found methodological variations due to material boundaries, the inclusion of sequestered carbon, end of life assumptions and data sources. While their paper covered case Operational water use studies drawn from the last thirty years, reviews of more recent case studies find similar results [22][23][24].…”

Section: Identifying Three Key Methodological Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why method matters: Temporal, spatial and physical variations in LCA and their impact on choice of structural system

Moncaster

Pomponi

Symons

et al. 2018

Energy and Buildings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used as an early-stage design-decision tool to support choices of structural system. However LCA modellers must first make numerous methodological decisions, and the resultant wide variations in approach are often inadequately described by the modellers. This paper identifies, and quantifies, the three major areas of methodological variation. These are: temporal differences in the stages considered; spatial differences in the material boundaries; and physical disparities in the data coefficients. The effects are then demonstrated through a case study of a student residential building in Cambridge. The cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure is compared with concrete frame, steel frame and load-bearing masonry, considering the influence that varying the temporal boundaries, the data coefficients, and the spatial boundaries has on the choice. While for this building CLT is confirmed as the lowest impact material, the paper demonstrates that varying the methodological choices can change the results by an alarming factor of 10 or even more. The findings confirm the need for the utmost clarity and transparency with all LCA calculations. Making wider industry or policy decisions based on LCA results should be undertaken with extreme caution.

show abstract

“…In recent years, the focus on incorporating uncertainties in LCA has increased due to the growing interest of regulatory bodies, industry and society on the environmental impact of products and infrastructures. Many studies have been conducted to categorise and quantify uncertainty in LCA models (see Baker and Lepech (2009), Heijungs and Huijbregts (2004) and Lloyd and Ries (2007) for comprehensive reviews) and also to assist the policy-making and design processes in specific areas such as construction industry (Batouli, Bienvenu, & Mostafavi, 2017;Blengini & Carlo, 2010;Hoxha, Habert, Lasvaux, Chevalier, & Le Roy, 2017;S€ ayn€ ajoki, Heinonen, Junnila, & Horvath, 2017;Tecchio, 2015), waste management (Clavreul, Guyonnet, & Christensen, 2012) and agriculture (Mackenzie, Ferguson, & Kyriazakis, 2014).…”

Section: Identification and Categorisation Of Uncertainties In Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Consideration of uncertainties in LCA for infrastructure using probabilistic methods

Ivanov

Honfí

Santandrea

et al. 2019

Structure and Infrastructure Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The construction and usage of transport infrastructure are major causes of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. The effects of resource consumption and pollutant emissions are often quantified through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) models. All decisions made in infrastructure projects during the whole life cycle are afflicted by uncertainty, e.g. physical properties of materials or amount of pollutants emitted by certain processes. The pervasive role of uncertainty is reflected in LCA models, which therefore should consider uncertainty from various sources and provide a sound quantification of their effects. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to give an overview of different sources of uncertainty in LCA of infrastructure projects and to describe systematic methods to evaluate their influence on the results. The possibility of including uncertainty in a LCA-tool for infrastructure is presented, studying the sensitivity of the model output to the input parameters and two alternative approaches for propagation of uncertainty using two case studies. It is shown that, besides the influence of uncertainty in emission factors, other inputs such as material amounts and service life could contribute significantly to the variability of model output and has to be considered if reliable results are sought. ARTICLE HISTORY

show abstract

Can life-cycle assessment produce reliable policy guidelines in the building sector?

Cited by 105 publications

References 70 publications

A Life Cycle Assessment of Two Residential Buildings Using Two Different LCA Database-Software Combinations: Recognizing Uniformities and Inconsistencies

A Life Cycle Assessment of Two Residential Buildings Using Two Different LCA Database-Software Combinations: Recognizing Uniformities and Inconsistencies

Why method matters: Temporal, spatial and physical variations in LCA and their impact on choice of structural system

Consideration of uncertainties in LCA for infrastructure using probabilistic methods

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About