Abstract
Purpose
Over the past two decades, energy efficiency of building operation has increased significantly. As a result, the percentage of building life cycle energy attributed to embodied energy has also risen. This percentage, as measured in recent LCA studies, ranges between 2% and 51% and is influenced by the different climatic, infrastructure, and building characteristics that comprise the input data for these studies. Comparing the results of these studies is helpful in understanding how different combinations of these characteristics influence the relative proportions of embodied and operational energy. However, results are also influenced by the subjectivity inherent in each LCA study. Thus, meaningful comparison of results requires documentation of study methodologies, as outlined in ISO 14041.
Methods
In this paper, 20 journal articles describing LCA studies of buildings were reviewed for their adherence to key ISO 14041 documentation requirements.
Results
It was found that the majority of journal articles have inadequate documentation.
Conclusions
Journal articles are not subject to ISO 14041 requirements and, due to limitations in article length, some degree of documentation is necessarily omitted. However, since journal articles provide much of the publicly available data on the life cycle energy of buildings, a minimum degree of documentation should be provided to allow comparison between LCA results, without substantially increasing article length. Recommended documentation for journal articles that describe LCA studies of buildings, as proposed in this paper, includes: a list life cycle stages and unit processes included within the system boundary; a statement of calculation procedure; and the referencing of all data sources.
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Notes
There is a limit to this increase. With each successive step upstream, the magnitude of fuel and electricity inputs becomes smaller and approaches zero. Thus, embodied energy converges to a single value.
Data sources used in IO-based LCI are distinct from those used in process-based LCI, In IO-based LCI, economic input–output tables are used to model the economic activity of an aggregated industry as a unit process and to model the monetary exchanges between industries as flows. In process-based LCI, actual physical processes are modeled as unit processes, which are connected by various mass and energy flows.
An exception is Blanchard and Reppe, 1998, which is a Master’s thesis.
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Optis, M., Wild, P. Inadequate documentation in published life cycle energy reports on buildings. Int J Life Cycle Assess 15, 644–651 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-010-0203-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-010-0203-4