Abstract
In hot desert climates, the office buildings with high-performance glazing systems (HPGSs) provide better indoor thermal and visual comfort to the occupants due to the advanced coatings which prevent the undesired heat gain and daylight. However, these systems save energy in the use phase; it could consume more energy in the pre-use and post-use phases. Furthermore, the use of advanced materials may have negative impacts on the environment. Therefore, this paper selected the comparative life cycle assessment method as an environmental measuring tool to compare the energy consumption and the environmental impacts of three HPGSs with that of the conventional clear double-glazing system. The results show that the photovoltaic glazing system (PVGS) has the lowest energy consumption and the lowest environmental impacts, followed by the electrochromic glazing system (ECGS) and the low-E glazing system. In the use phase, both PVGS and ECGS achieved the highest energy savings, 87% and 25%, respectively. The use phase has a major contribution to the energy consumption and environmental impacts, while the pre-use and post-use phases have insignificant contributions in this study. The results could support decision-makers in choosing the most environmentally friendly HPGS for their projects.
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Acknowledgements
The first author would like to thank the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) and Egypt–Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST) for providing the fund for this research to purchase DesignBuilder software license and conduct this work. The authors would like to thank GreenDelta GmbH for the free openLCA v1.7 license and Ecoinvent database for academically free access. Furthermore, thanks to Saint-Gobain Glass in Egypt and France, SAGE Glass in USA, and Onyx Solar Company in Spain for the appreciated support by information and technical reports that helped in completing this work.
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Elkhayat, Y.O., Ibrahim, M.G., Tokimatsu, K. et al. A comparative life cycle assessment of three high-performance glazing systems for office buildings in a hot desert climate zone. Clean Techn Environ Policy 22, 1499–1515 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-020-01891-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-020-01891-2