Summary Reader Response Draft 1

IMPORTANCE OF CONDUCTING LIFECYCLE ASSESSMENT (LCA) ON GREEN BUILDING MATERIALS


  California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery's article, Green Building Materials (n.d.) states that using green building materials encourages the conservation of waning non-renewable resources globally, reduces building owners' and occupants' costs throughout the building's lifecycle, helps conserve energy, improve occupant productivity and health, and provide enhanced design flexibility. Making early design selections and establishing strategies are essential for green building materials (Froeschle, 1999).

 

  The environmental assessment of materials and buildings is convoluted due to its subjectivity and complexity (Saghafi and Teshnizi, 2011). The choice of building materials influences the overall performance of a building, and the materials' impacts should be considered "from cradle to grave" (Song and Zhang, 2018, p. 2). The Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is a multifaceted system of qualifying and comparing inflows of materials, energy usage, and emission outputs with regard to building materials at varying spatial scales and contexts (Finnveden et al., 2009, as cited in Ding, 2014).


 LCA does have its limitations in evaluating green building materials, due to data limitations (Finnveden et al., 2009). However, given the criticality of green building materials on sustainability, it is imperative to have a complete lifecycle outlook toward selecting green building materials to holistically determine responsible material usage, energy consumption, and building emissions.

  

1. Impacts of LCA on Material Usage and Building Emissions

 

  An estimated 24% of global raw materials were consumed by the construction industry (Bribian et al., 2010). Throughout their lifecycle, buildings impact the environment, and the building materials used will affect their overall performance. Sustainable building materials are often perceived as materials that are natural. However, materials regarded as natural are not necessarily green materials: Asbestos, once added to some building materials, is now banned due to its carcinogenic properties; radon, a radioactive gas emitted by some stones in buildings, can be harmful to inhale; or turpentine, a solvent obtained by distilling tree resins, can negatively impact human health (Franzoni, 2011).

 Thus, it is crucial for building stakeholders to understand and conduct thorough LCA of the building materials used. This allows them to eliminate building materials with negative environmental emissions and impacts.

  

2. Impacts of LCA on Energy Consumption and Building Emissions


  Energy consumption and carbon emissions are other critical considerations for green building materials. Buildings use 30 – 40% of all primary energy globally and they are responsible for 40 – 50% of greenhouse gas emissions (Asif, Muneer, and Kelley, 2007). Through lifecycle analysis, operational energy demonstrates a major share (80–90%) in the lifecycle energy usage of buildings, followed by embodied energy (10–20%), then demolition and other processes (negligible) (Ramesha, Prakasha, and Shukla, 2010). The LCA of corporate buildings constructed in China using steel and concrete depicts embodied energy and environmental emissions of steel-framed buildings to be better than concrete-framed buildings (Xing, Xu, and Jun, 2008). Nevertheless, due to the higher thermal conductivity of steel compared to concrete, operational energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions were larger for steel-framed buildings, hence their overall lifecycle energy consumption and carbon footprint were slightly higher.

 

  LCA of a building’s energy consumption and carbon emissions is expedient to access strategies to reduce them. In doing so, the areas of a building’s lifecycle that have higher energy demands and carbon emissions can be identified and addressed.

 

 3. Limitations & Future Prospects of LCA


Due to data limitations, LCA tools are inadequate in verifying the environmental impacts throughout a building’s lifecycle (Cole, 2010, as cited in Ding, 2014). These limitations include data variability, incomplete or erroneous data, lack of precision and inaccurately or wrongly implemented digital algorithms, and relationship (Finnveden et al., 2009).

 

 LCA does not adequately address how well a product or building material can be recycled (Saghafi and Teshnizi, 2011). The effects of recycling are handled through allocation, which creates flaws in accuracy based on assumptions of a material’s future recyclability. A theoretical example of ore-based steel beams, which can be considered a green building material due to their recyclability, illustrates this (Thormark, 2001). With available LCA allocation methods, varying assessment impacts can range from; the dismantling, and upgrading of transportation processes associated with recycling steel to; all impacts from ore-based steel production, future waste treatments, and associated transport emissions. This demonstrates the unpredictability and uncertainty that may arise when using LCA to determine the impacts of green building materials.

 

  Due to the lack of predictive data and inaccurate relationships established, the arbitrary assessments of LCA may give building stakeholders an impression of being descriptive rather than being based on assumptions of the future (Thormark, 2001).

 

  However, LCA methodologies have been cultivated over the last decades (Finnveden et al., 2009). Current developments in databases, quality assurance, consistency, and harmonisation of methods contribute to this. With growing comprehension and interest in developing LCA methodologies, more innovative research and solutions can be conducted. Greater accuracy and precision in analysing building material impacts, especially green building materials, would allow for enhanced holistic considerations of building emissions, energy consumption, and usage of materials.

 

4. Conclusion

 

  Despite their upfront or perceived benefits, the longstanding effects of using green building materials may result in an overall disservice to the environment. Therefore, building stakeholders must be able to discern the overarching impacts of their materials and buildings throughout their lifecycles. This is attainable through the use of LCA, where building emissions, energy consumption, and materials used can be thoroughly and holistically analysed. Green building materials can then be acutely selected and used responsibly to provide an enduring boon.

 

 

Word Count (Excluding Paragraph dividers): 876 Words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

  

Asif, M., Muneer, T. & Kelley, R. (2007). Life cycle assessment: A case study of a dwelling home in Scotland, Building and Environment, 42(3), 1391-1394.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2005.11.023

 

 

Bribián, Z.I., Capilla, A.V., & Usón, A., A. (2011). Life cycle assessment of building materials: Comparative analysis of energy and environmental impacts and evaluation of the eco-efficiency improvement potential. Building and Environment, 46(5), 1133-1140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2010.12.002

 

 

California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). (n.d.). Green building materials. CalRecycle. https://calrecycle.ca.gov/greenbuilding/materials/

 

 

Cole, R.J. (2010) ‘Environmental assessment: shifting scales’, In Designing high-density cities for social and environmental sustainability, Edward Ng (ed), Earthscan, London, 273-282.

 

 

Ding, K.C. (2014). Life cycle assessment (LCA) of sustainable building materials: an

Overview. Eco-Labelling and Case Studies, 38-62.

https://doi.org/10.1533/9780857097729.1.38.

 

 

Finnveden, G., Hauschild, M.Z., Ekvall, T., Guinee, J., Heijungs, R., Hellweg, S., Koehler, A., Pennington, D. & Suh, S. (2009). Recent developments in life cycle assessment, Journal of Environmental Management, 3, 1-21.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.06.018

 

 

Franzoni, E. (2011). Materials selection for green buildings: Which tools for engineers and architects? Procedia Engineering, 21, 883-890. https://doi.org/10.1533/9780857097729.1.38

 

 

Froeschle, L. M. (1999). Green building challenge '98: An International Conference on the performance assessment of buildings, October 1998, Vancouver, Canada. https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/biblio/675150

 

 

Ramesh, T., Prakash, R. & Shukla, K.K. (2010). Life cycle energy analysis of buildings: An overview. Energy and Buildings, 42(10), 1592-1600.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2010.05.007

 

 

Saghafi, M. D., and Teshnizi, Z. S. H. (2011). Recycling value of building materials in building assessment systems. Energy and Buildings, 43(11), 3181–3188. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ENBUILD.2011.08.016

 

 

Song, Y., & Zhang, H. (2018). Research on sustainability of building materials [Conference session]. IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 452 022169, School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.

 

 

Thormark, C. (2001). Recycling Potential and Design for Disassembly in Buildings [Doctoral dissertation, Building Science].

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lup/publication/da69c22d-8bc0-4b97-b95d-d11751499304

 

 

Xing, S., Xu, Z., & Jun, G. (2008). Inventory analysis of LCA on steel- and concrete-construction office buildings. Energy & Buildings, 40(7), 1188–1193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2007.10.016


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