The Hashemite University

Faculty of Engineering
. Department of Architecture .

Sustainability Building assessment methods

Life cycle assessment (LCA)
Green Architecture
Life-Cycle Assessment of buildings

Quantitative Life cycle

assessment of buildings
(LCA)
Green Architecture
Life-Cycle Assessment of buildings

Life-Cycle Assessment

• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method for evaluating and quantifying the environmental load
and impact of processes and products throughout their life cycle from the cradle to the grave
(Ortiz, Castells et al. 2009).

• The LCA process is governed under ISO 14000, the series of international standards addressing
environmental management.

• According to International Standard ISO 14040, LCA is a “compilation and evaluation of the
inputs, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its
life cycle.
Green Architecture
Life-Cycle Assessment of buildings

Life-Cycle Assessment of buildings

• The use of LCA for buildings requires a set of guiding principles, which consider the unique
character of each building design, complexity in defining systems, and related decisions.

• LCA tools in architecture allows architects and other building professionals to understand
the energy use and other environmental impacts associated with all life cycle phases of the
building: procurement, construction, operation, and decommissioning

• In the building sector, the life-cycle assessment of a building project starts before any
physical construction activities and ends after its usable life.

• The output of an LCA can be thought of as a wide-ranging environmental footprint of a

building—including aspects such as:
a) energy use,
b) global warming potential(GWP),
c) habitat destruction,
d) resource depletion, and
e) toxic emissions.
Green Architecture
Variants of LCA

Variants of LCA

Types of Process-Based LCA Methods:

• In a process-based LCA, the inputs (materials and energy resources) and the outputs (emissions
and wastes to the environment) for each step required to produce a product.
• LCA methods implemented in the building construction industry are based primarily on
process-based LCA.
 Green Architecture
Life Cycle Stages

Life Cycle Stages

• Buildings are like every other product or process goes through various phases or stages in its life.
• Each stage is composed of a number of activities.
• In case of buildings, these stages are more specifically delineated as:
1. Materials Manufacturing: Removal of raw materials from earth, transportation of
materials to the manufacturing locations, manufacture of finished or intermediate
materials, building product fabrication, and packaging and distribution of building
products
2. Construction: All activities relating to the actual building project construction.
3. Use and Maintenance: Building operation including energy consumption, water usage,
environmental waste generation, repair and replacement of building assemblies and
systems, and transport and equipment use for repair and replacement
4. End of Life: Includes energy consumed and waste produced due to building demolition
and disposal of materials to landfills, and transport of waste materials. Recycling and
reuse activities related to demolition waste also can be included and have a “negative
impact.
Green Architecture
Linear and Circular Life-Cycle Assessment

Sustainable Design, Ecological Design, and Green Design

• The issue of resource-conscious design is central to sustainable construction, which ultimately

aims to minimize natural resource consumption and the resulting impact on ecological systems.
• Sustainable construction considers the role and potential interface with ecosystems to provide
services in a synergistic fashion.
• With respect to materials selection, closing materials loops and eliminating solid, liquid, and
gaseous emissions are key sustainability objectives.
• Closed loop describes a process of keeping materials in productive use by reuse and recycling
rather than disposing of them as waste at the end of the product or building life cycle.
• Products in closed loops are easily disassembled, and the constituent materials are able to be
recycled and worthy of recycling. Because recycling is not entirely thermodynamically efficient,
dissipation of residue into the biosphere is inevitable.
• Thus, the recycled materials must be inherently nontoxic to biological systems. Most common
construction materials are not completely recyclable but rather are down cyclable for lower-
value reuse, such as for fill or road subbase.
• Fortunately, aggregates, concrete, fill dirt, block, brick, mortar, tiles, terrazzo, and similar low
technology materials are composed of inert substances with low ecological toxicity.
Green Architecture
Linear and Circular Life-Cycle Assessment
Green Architecture
Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

The output from an LCA energy assessment model, is the projected energy use within a
building as it operates over a typical meteorological year.

This energy is considered the “operational energy” and is one component of the input
needed to complete a building LCA.

The second major component of energy consumed by a building is the “embodied

energy,” which comes from the materials manufacturing and construction phases of the
building project.

The need to understand embodied energy becomes more important as measures to

reduce operational energy are taken.

For “net-zero buildings,” the majority of the energy impacts will be embodied, as
operational energy needs are increasingly met by on-site power generation.

An LCA that includes the materials manufacturing and construction phase of the
project is the primary means of computing the embodied energy in a building.
Green Architecture
Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Green Architecture
Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Life Cycle Assessment in the Building Industry

• The LCA methodology as it

relates to the building industry
can be pictured as operating at
one of four levels:

1. Material,
2. Product
3. Building
4. Industry,
Green Architecture
Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Life Cycle Assessment in the Building Industry

• At the Material level, It is not likely that an architect or any building industry consultant
would be called on to produce material-level LCI data.

• This information is calculated by process chemists, chemical engineers, and associated

specialists and submitted for inclusion in various LCI databases.

• There is some direct use of material-level LCI data by building professionals however.
Green Architecture
Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Life Cycle Assessment in the Building Industry

• At the Product level, an LCA is calculated as a collection of materials, which are assembled
into a final (or intermediate) product.

• A quantity take-off of the product is completed, and the emissions from each component of
the products are summed.

• To complete a product LCA, a thorough knowledge of the source and quantities of materials
and the manufacturing processes of the finished product are required. General-purpose LCA
software, such as Gabi, Boustead, or SimaPro is usually used to complete a product LCA.
Green Architecture
Embodied Energy, Operational Energy and LCA

Life Cycle Assessment in the Building Industry

• At the Building level, architects may themselves be the LCA practitioners, using building-
specific LCA tools to create LCAs that characterize the environmental footprint of proposed
projects, either for the purpose of meeting regulatory requirements e.g., to stay below a
specified impact threshold) or as part of an iterative design methodology that seeks to
minimize the environmental impact of a project.

• LCAs created at the Industry level are more likely to be of use to policy makers and planners.
• Building LCA, or whole-building LCA is a product LCA where the product is the building.
• In this case, the architect can be the LCA expert, as the architect understands how the
building is constructed, how building materials and products flow to the jobsite, and how
the building is going to be operated over time.
Green Architecture
LCA and the Design Process

LCA and the Design Process

At what stages of the design process can LCA be useful?

Green Architecture
LCA and the Design Process
Green Architecture
LCA and the Design Process

LCA and the Design Process

Green Architecture
LCA and the Design Process
Green Architecture
Challenges in the Use of LCA

Challenges in the Use of LCA:

• Although LCA is doubtless the best

tool for analysing the environmental
impact of product or project, the
methodology and underlying data
are still being developed.

• LCA is a complex method heavily

relying on the availability and
completeness of data (LCI) and
methodologies for tabulating
material use within the LCA tools.

• They need highly skilled individual

to perform these tasks
Green Architecture
LCA and the Design Process

Stages of LCA:
Green Architecture
LCA tools for Architects

LCA tools that commonly used worldwide include:

1. ATHENA®
3. BEES®
4. . EQUER
2. LCAid
3. Eco-Quantum
4. LISA
5. Envest
6. LCAit
7. PEMS
8. TEAM
9. Umberto
10. SIB LCA
11. Boustead
12. SimaPro
13. GaBi
Green Architecture
Important Questions to Consider When Choosing a Tool

Important Questions to Consider When Choosing a Tool:

1. What is the configuration of the tool? Does it embed a LCI database and impact
assessment method within or are these two required separately?
2. What type of tool is it? Material/Assembly/Whole- Building LCA tool.
3. What life-cycle stages are accounted for in the tool?
4. What is the level of expertise required for using the tool?
5. What inputs are required? What is the method of input?
6. What are the outputs obtained from the tool? What are the options to view the
outcome/results?
7. How capable is the tool in terms of interoperability? Will it accept databases from
other sources? Are the outcomes of the tool compatible with other analysis and
documentation tools?
8. What kind and number of building assemblies and materials that can be evaluated by
the tool?
9. What impact categories can be evaluated if the tool has an impact assessment model
embedded within?
10. Does the tool provide normalized results?
11. What is the latest version of the tool?
12. How much does it coast to use?
Green Architecture
Classification of LCA Tools
Green Architecture
Classification of LCA Tools
Green Architecture
LCA Terminology

LCA Terminology

Functional Unit:
The functional unit can be defined as the unit of comparison that assures that the products
being compared provide an equivalent level of function or service.

An example of a functional unit when comparing two building design options for a school can be
“provision of a school building that operates for 50 years.”
Green Architecture
LCA Terminology

LCA Terminology

System Boundary:
System boundary is defined as an interface between a product system and the environment or other
product systems.
It defines the activities and processes that will be included in each life-cycle stage for the LCA analysis
and those that will be excluded (the scope of the analysis).
 Green Architecture
LCA Terminology

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Database:

LCI data are at the heart of any LCA analysis. Several organizations and LCA tool developers
have developed LCI databases that contain material and energy use data as well as
emissions data for commonly used products and processes.

These databases contain elementary flows (inputs and outputs) for each unit process for a
product system and are specific to countries and regions within countries.

The LCI data are region-specific because the energy fuel mix and methods of production often
differ from region to region.

The data can be based on industry averages or could be supplier-specific.

For example, the BEES LCA Tool is driven largely by product data supplied by suppliers.
However, the modules do not contain data characterizing the full life cycles of specific
products. The data in the LCI databases generally account for raw material extraction,
transportation to a manufacturing unit, the manufacturing process, and packaging and
distribution.
Green Architecture
LCA Output

LCA results can include:

• Annual Energy
Consumption
• Energy Consumption by
Life-Cycle Stages
• Energy Consumption by
Assembly Group
• Other specific summary
measures such as:
1. global warming
potential (GWP),
2. acidification
potential (AP),
3. ozone depletion
potential (ODP)
4. Impact on human
health
Green Architecture
Guidelines to Conduct an LCA Process

LCA process Steps:

Green Architecture
Interpretation

Impact Categories

The impact categories of LCA tools and methods vary from system to system but
usually include:

Global Warming Potential (GWP)

The unit for measurement is grams equivalent of CO2 per functional unit of product

Acidification Potential (AP)

Acidifying compounds emitted in a gaseous state either dissolve in atmospheric water
or fixed on solid particles. They reach ecosystems through dissolution in rain.

The two compounds principally involved in acidification are sulfur and nitrogen
compounds. The unit of measurement is grams of hydrogen ions per functional unit of
product.
Eutrophication Potential (EP)
Eutrophication is the addition of mineral nutrients to the soil or water. In both media, the addition of
large quantities of mineral nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous results in generally undesirable
shifts in the number of species in ecosystems and a reduction in ecological diversity.

Fossil Fuel Depletion

This impact addresses only the depletion aspect of fossil fuel extraction, not the fact that the
extraction itself may generate impacts.

Smog Formation Potential

Under certain climatic conditions, air emissions from industry and fossil-fueled transportation can be
trapped at ground level, where they react with sunlight to produce photochemical smog.

Ozone Depletion Potential

Emissions from some processes may result in the thinning of the ozone layer, which protects the earth
from certain parts of the solar radiation spectrum.

Ecological Toxicity
The ecological toxicity impact measures the potential of a chemical released into the environment to
harm terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Water Use
Water resource depletion has not been routinely assessed in LCAs to date, but researchers are
beginning to address this issue to account for areas where water is scarce, such as the western United
States.