Environmental modelling of building stocks – An integrated review of life cycle-based assessment models to support EU policy making

Abstract

Various environmental challenges, particularly the rising severity of the impacts of climate change, require a systematic shift in and decarbonization of the global economy. Due to their high environmental impacts, buildings and construction have a special role in decarbonization. Environmental modelling of building stock dynamics can help policy makers and inform decision making. This study presents a systematic review of both the latest scientific literature on environmental modelling of building stocks and related EU policy initiatives. Our findings illuminate the strengths and limitations of existing approaches as well as the potential of such modelling and the required directions for future development to provide effective policy support. Based on the assessment of 104 scientific papers, our study shortlisted and analysed 22 environmental building stock modelling approaches. While promising, these show various limitations on their effectiveness in supporting decarbonization efforts while avoiding burden shifting. Future building stock models should offer extended system boundaries and comprehensive life cycle assessment, improved hotspot analysis and impact monitoring across spatiotemporal scales. A long-term perspective on the entire building stock covering climate and other environmental impacts is needed, as outlined in the latest standards. By linking existing studies to related EU policy objectives, we identify various studies that investigate scenarios and strategies relevant to EU policy makers and highlight research gaps. Future research should enable comprehensive environmental assessment of building stocks across scales and emphasize the monitoring of multiple environmental impacts of building stock development to ensure compliance with environmental targets and minimization of trade-offs.

Bio-based building material solutions for environmental benefits over conventional construction products – Life cycle assessment of regenerative design strategies (1/2)

“…However, as such targets are developed and compared to existing buildings' impacts, it appears that current construction practices are not able to achieve them [11,[13][14][15][16]]. This diagnosis is supported by recent analyses on EU building stock development, which stress the importance of developing and implementing strategies for monitoring and effectively reducing building-related environmental impacts [17]. In this context, regenerative design strategies aim at minimizing negative impacts (such as GHG emissions) while enabling environmental bene ts (like biogenic carbon xation) based on a holistic perspective with the environment at its core.…”

Development of environmental benchmarks for the Belgian residential building stock

“…The problem is that too strong a focus on carbon emission reduction diverts attention from other environmental impacts. To avoid this burden shifting, it is suggested that benchmarks should consider multiple impact indicators [22]. However, such systems are currently less prevalent [23].…”

Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) [Volume 2]

“…UA allows observing the possible variation in model outputs, caused by the uncertainty present in the inputs (Saltelli et al, 2004). It has been applied to energy simulations (Kotek et al, 2007) and is gaining importance in LCA (Röck et al, 2021). From our results, we investigated uncertainty in the outputs by analysing their distribution via boxplots.…”