Low-energy buildings in combination with grid decarbonization, life cycle assessment of passive house buildings in Northern Ireland

This paper implements a Life Cycle Assessment of several low-energy/passive house buildings located in Northern Ireland. This work aims (i) to assess the environmental performance of the buildings and (ii) to evaluate the effect of electricity decarbonization on the dwellings' global warming potential (GWP). Three different future electricity mix scenarios have been used and compared to a static scenario where the current electricity mix remains constant. The LCA results of the static scenario reveal that applying passive-house standards could reduce the impact of dwellings while it does not necessarily provide a positive environmental outcome. The building operation phase contributed the most to the environmental impact, while negligible impact comes from the end-of-life stage. The electricity decarbonization leads to a significant reduction of GWP in all cases, with the highest value achieved for the passive house using the highest share of electricity, 58%-70% GWP reduction compared to the static scenario. Moreover, electricity decarbonization increases the relative share of the production stage to the overall building emission. Therefore, close attention should be paid to construction material selection in any effort aiming to achieve further environmental benefits. The buildings' environmental and operational energy performances were also compared to the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper presents a Life Cycle Assessment of low-energy/passive house buildings in Northern Ireland, aiming to evaluate their environmental performance and the impact of electricity decarbonization on global warming potential. The results indicate that applying passive-house standards can reduce the environmental impact of dwellings, but it may not necessarily yield positive environmental outcomes. The operational phase of the buildings contributes the most to environmental impact, while the end-of-life stage has negligible impact. Electricity decarbonization leads to a significant reduction in global warming potential, with the highest reduction achieved by passive houses using a higher share of electricity. Moreover, electricity decarbonization increases the relative share of the production phase in the overall building emissions. Therefore, careful selection of construction materials should be prioritized for further environmental benefits.