Journal
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
Volume 44, Issue 12, Pages 2510-2520Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2009.05.001
Keywords
Energy certification; Simplified LCA; Embodied energy; Building materials
Funding
- European Commission [EIE/07/090/SI2.467609]
- CIRCE Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The paper presents the state-of-the-art regarding the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) in the building sector, providing a list of existing tools, drivers and barriers, potential users and purposes of LCA studies in this sector. It also proposes a simplified LCA methodology and applies this to a case study focused on Spain. The thermal simulation tools considered in the Spanish building energy certification standards are analysed and complemented with a simplified LCA methodology for evaluating the impact of certain improvements to the building design. The simplified approach proposed allows global comparisons between the embodied energy and emissions of the building materials and the energy consumption and associated emissions at the use stage. The results reveal that embodied energy can represent more than 30% of the primary energy requirement during the life span of a single house of 222 m(2) with a garage for one car. The contribution of the building materials decreases if the house does not include a parking area, since this increases the heated surface percentage. Usually the top cause of energy consumption in residential building is heating, but the second is the building materials, which can represent more than 60% of the heating consumption. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available