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Assessment of the environmental performance of buildings: A critical evaluation of the influence of technical building equipment on residential buildings

  • PROMOTION OF YOUNG SCIENTISTS IN LCA
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Abstract

Purpose

Sustainability assessments of buildings using the life cycle approach have become more and more common. This includes the assessment of the environmental performance of buildings. However, the influence of the construction products used for the fabric, the finishing, and the technical building equipment of buildings has hardly been described in literature. For this reason, we evaluated the influence of the technical building equipment and its impact on the environment for different residential buildings.

Materials and methods

Five residential buildings were evaluated by applying the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) (ISO14040) expressed using quantitative assessment categories according to prEN15978.

Results and discussion

Results show that the optimization of energy performance has already reached a high level in Austria, so that the overall potential for possible improvements is quite low. Especially in low-energy and passive–house-standard residential buildings, the limits for energy optimization in the use phase have mostly been achieved. In contrast to this, the integrated LCA (iLCA) findings attribute a high optimization potential to the construction products used for the technical building equipment as well as to the building fabric and finishing. Additionally, the passive house shows the lowest contribution of the technical building equipment on the overall LCA results.

Conclusions

The iLCA findings suggest that it is recommended to include the technical building equipment for future assessments of the environmental performance of buildings. It is also suggested to use a broad number of environmental indicators for building LCA.

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Notes

  1. Technical Committee ISO/TC 59, Building construction, Subcommittee SC 17, Sustainability in building construction (International Organization for Standardization 2008a; International Organization for Standardization 2010a; International Organization for Standardization 2007; International Organization for Standardization 2010b; and ISO21932)

  2. Technical Committee CEN/TC 350 Sustainability of construction works (FprEN15643-1, FprEN15643-2, FprEN15804 and FprEN15978)

  3. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Green Building Rating System, http://www.usgbc.org/

  4. BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for Buildings Around The World, http://www.breeam.org

  5. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen (DGNB)—The German Sustainable Building Council, http://www.dgnb.de/

  6. Österreichische Gesellschaft für Nachhaltige Immobilienwirtschaft (ÖGNI), Austrian Sustainable Building Council, http://www.ogni.at/

  7. Total Quality Building (TQB), Österreichische Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen (ÖGNB), https://www.oegnb.net/tqb.htm

  8. Directive 2010/31/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 2010 on the energy performance of buildings (recast)

  9. The meaning of integrated LCA (iLCA) is synonymous for the attempt in this work to consider the entire building life cycle and all construction products used, especially the consideration of the technical building equipment.

  10. The classification of energy standards is regulated in the Austrian Standard for Energy certificate for buildings (Austrian Standards Institute 2008)

  11. The ecoinvent Centre, a competence center of ETHZ, EPFL, PSI, Empa, and ART, Switzerland

  12. The environmental indicators proposed in the FprEN 15978 (FprEN15978) at the moment consist of seven indicators describing environmental impacts, eight indicators describing resource use, three Indicators describing waste categories, and four indicators describing the output flows leaving the system.

  13. CML, Centre of Environmental Science, Den Haag and Leiden, The Netherlands

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the suggestions of two anonymous reviewers who helped to improve this manuscript.

The analysis and results described in this paper are part of the PhD research of A. Passer at Graz University of Technology, supervised by P. Maydl and H. Wallbaum.

The authors would like to thank C. Mitterer for providing help with data illustration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Technology and Testing of Building Materials, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 24, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Alexander Passer, Helmuth Kreiner & Peter Maydl

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  1. Alexander Passer
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  2. Helmuth Kreiner
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  3. Peter Maydl
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Correspondence to Alexander Passer.

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Passer, A., Kreiner, H. & Maydl, P. Assessment of the environmental performance of buildings: A critical evaluation of the influence of technical building equipment on residential buildings. Int J Life Cycle Assess 17, 1116–1130 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0435-6

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