Life cycle assessment in the construction sector: A review

The last decades, lowering the ecological impact of buildings is receiving increased attention by researchers, policy-makers and companies. Mostly the focus is on reducing energy consumption and the use of eco-friendly materials, but the concept of life-cycle thinking is growing in importance. This paper tries to give an overview of the current situation of Life cycle assessment (LCA) in the construction industry, both of regulatory developments and academic case studies. After a short history of LCA, the focus is on LCA methodology, new standards and frameworks and an extensive selection of recent case studies. Despite some inherent limitations of LCA as an analytic tool and fundamental differences between the individual cases, still some common trends can be indicated. In standard buildings, the use phase contributes up to 90% of the total environmental burdens, mainly due to heating and/or cooling. Due to regulations, new buildings become more energy efficient, and thereby other phases of the life cycle gain in importance e.g., choice of materials, construction, end-of-life and water use. These research topics deserve more attention, together with economic issues, the improvement of data quality and implementation of probability density distributions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.