Abstract
Purpose
This study tries to fill a gap in early-stage design and incorporate LCA results in design from early concept formation. This research aims to find the most influential parameters in building embodied carbon (EC) in early-stage design and suggest a range of their impact so that the architects can navigate their design process towards low-carbon intensive solutions. As the structure is the main contributor to building EC, the impact of structural parameters on mitigating EC of residential buildings was studied.
Methods
This research introduces a novel design exploration method for concept-stage life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyze over 8200 design solutions. Parametric modeling was employed to explore structural design variations for a multi-unit residential building on Vancouver Island, Canada. The study focused on eight key structural design parameters, with a comprehensive analysis of the resulting EC for both the structure and foundation. The study encompasses the A1–A3 stages of the building life cycle, and the findings were presented through a design-oriented dashboard for comparative assessment.
Results and discussion
The results of this study reveal that material and structural system choices exert the most significant influence on EC. Furthermore, the number of stories and building footprint geometry play pivotal roles. In low-rise buildings, geometry holds a higher impact, while in taller structures, the number of stories assumes greater significance. For steel and wood structures, floor-to-floor height emerges as a crucial factor in designing low-carbon buildings while the impact in concrete structures tends to be lower. The study challenges a prevailing misconception. It demonstrates that the normalized EC of the structure slightly decreases with an increase in the number of stories, for a given area. This decrease is attributed to material consumption savings achieved by minimizing structural components. This insight facilitates achieving lower carbon thresholds in taller structures with compact forms. Additionally, the study underscores the advantages of symmetrical and compact footprints in achieving lower carbon emissions.
Conclusions and recommendations
This research provides a free web-based tool for estimating the carbon footprint of the structure for concept design decision-making. To achieve the lowest possible carbon footprint, the study strongly advocates for using wood as the structural system, coupled with minimization of floor-to-floor height and span length. As the results show compact and symmetrical footprint shape contributes to lowering building carbon footprint. While variations to compact and symmetrical footprints do impact structural EC, their influence may be outweighed by prioritizing other design goals. The study highlights the dominance of structure over substructure in total carbon footprint within the scope of studied buildings, suggesting similar research in other regions and for underground structures. Additionally, future investigations should explore carbon savings through recycling and biogenic carbon at the end-of-life stage, thereby further reducing building emissions. This research equips designers, architects, and engineers with essential insights to make informed decisions at the concept design stage, advancing sustainable building solutions from inception.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data utilized in this study is available upon request. Interested parties may reach out to the corresponding author for access to the dataset.
References
Andersen CE, Rasmussen FN, Habert G, Birgisdóttir H (2021) Embodied GHG emissions of wooden buildings—challenges of biogenic carbon accounting in current LCA methods. Front Built Environ 7(August):1–15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2021.729096
De Wolf C, Iuorio O, Ochsendorf J (2014) Structural material quantities and embodied carbon coefficients: Challenges and opportunities. In: Griffin C, Mollner J (eds) Proceedings of the 5th annual school of architecture symposium. 5th annual school of architecture symposium - sustainable structures: the intersections of structural systems and green buildings, 16-18 Apr 2014, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA. School of Architecture, Portland State University, pp 309–328
European Committee for Standardization (2019) EN 15978:2019 sustainability of construction works - assessment of environmental performance of buildings - calculation method. CEN-CENELEC Management Centre, Brussels
Gibbons OP, Orr JJ (2020) How to calculate embodied carbon. IStructE Ltd
Government of Canada (2019) National inventory report 1990–2017. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate
Hammad AW, Akbarnezhad A, Oldfield P (2018) Optimising embodied carbon and U-value in load bearing walls: a mathematical bi-objective mixed integer programming approach. Energy Build 174:657–671. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.05.061
Hammond G, Jones C (2008) Inventory of carbon & energy (ICE) version 1.6a, Bath, UK
Hawkins W, Cooper S, Allen S, Roynon J, Ibell T (2021) Embodied carbon assessment using a dynamic climate model: case-study comparison of a concrete, steel and timber building structure. Structures 33:90–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2020.12.013
Hens I, Solnosky R, Brown NC (2021) Design space exploration for comparing embodied carbon in tall timber structural systems. Energy Build 244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.110983
Hollberg A, Genova G, Habert G (2020) Evaluation of BIM-based LCA results for building design. Autom Constr 109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2019.102972
Hollberg A (2016) A parametric method for building design optimization based on life cycle assessment (Doctoral Thesis). Bauhaus. https://doi.org/10.25643/bauhaus-universitaet.3800
Ibn-Mohammed T, Greenough R, Taylor S, Ozawa-Meida L, Acquaye A (2013) Operational vs. embodied emissions in buildings - a review of current trends. Energy Build 66:232–245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2013.07.026
IEA (2019) Global status report for buildings and construction 2019. IEA, Paris. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-statusreport-for-buildings-and-construction-2019
International Energy Agency & United Nations Environment Programme (2018) 2018 global status report: towards a zero-emission, efficient and resilient buildings and construction sector. https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/27140
Kovacic I, Zoller V (2015) Building life cycle optimization tools for early design phases. Energy 92:409–419. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ENERGY.2015.03.027
Liu J (2021) Early design stage building lifecycle analysis (LCA) of cost & carbon impact (Master's Thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/140196
López-Mesa B, Pitarch Á, Tomás A, Gallego T (2009) Comparison of environmental impacts of building structures with in situ cast floors and with precast concrete floors. Build Environ 44(4):699–712. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2008.05.017
Lucon O, Zain Ahmed A, Akbari USAH, Bertoldi P, Cabeza LF, Graham P, Brown M, Henry Abanda F, Korytarova K, Urge-Vorsatz D, Zain Ahmed A, Akbari H, Bertoldi P, Cabeza LF, Eyre N, Gadgil A, DD HL, Jiang Y, Liphoto E et al (2014) Climate change 2014: Mitigation of climate change. contribution of working group III to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Chap Buildings, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY
Norouzi MS, Labbafan S, Farajnia B, Torabi M, Norouzi MR (2023) Dataset on environmental impacts and costs of energy consumption in educational buildings in Iran. Data in Brief 51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2023.109606
Pak A (2019) Embodied carbon: the blindspot of the buildings industry. Canadian Architect. Retrieved on 26/2/2026. https://www.canadianarchitect.com/embodied-carbon-the-blindspot-of-the-buildings-industry/
Pereira L, Posen ID (2020) Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from electricity in the province of Ontario at different temporal resolutions. J Clean Prod 270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122514
Rodriguez B (2019) Embodied carbon of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigerants (Doctoral Thesis). University of Washington. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/44736
Simonen K, Rodriguez BX, De Wolf C (2017) Benchmarking the embodied carbon of buildings. Technol Archit Des 1(2):208–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/24751448.2017.1354623
Skullestad JL, Bohne RA, Lohne J (2016) High-rise timber buildings as a climate change mitigation measure – a comparative LCA of structural system alternatives. Energy Procedia 96:112–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2016.09.112
Tolia R (2020) Assessing the embodied emissions of building to the energy step code. UBC sustainability scholars report
Torabi M, Mahdavinejad M (2021) Past and future trends on the effects of occupant behaviour on building energy consumption. J Sustain Archit Civ Eng 29(2):83–101. https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.29.2.28576
Torabi M, Evins R (2022a) An LCA framework to prioritize carbon-sensitive measures in residential building design. In: eSim 2022: 12th Conference of IBPSA-Canada. IBPSA-Canada. https://publications.ibpsa.org/conference/paper/?id=esim2022_269
Torabi M, Labbafan S, Farajnia B (2022b) Data for electricity consumption, thermo-physical characteristics of residential buildings in Tehran. Data Brief 8(40):107813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2022.107813
Wang Z, Liu Y, Shen S (2021) Review on building life cycle assessment from the perspective of structural design. J Asian Archit Build Eng 20(6):689–705. https://doi.org/10.1080/13467581.2020.1807989
Ytrehus E (2015) Investigating the “CO2-premium” for building height. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU. http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2349754
Zaraza J, McCabe B, Duhamel M, Posen D (2022) Generative design to reduce embodied GHG emissions of high-rise buildings. Automat Constr 139:104274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2022.104274
Zolfaghari Z, Jones J (2022) A multi-variable building energy optimization: assessing the role of energy efficient lighting technology in changing the optimal window-to-wall ratio in an office building. Int J Sustain Energ. https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2022.2118276
Funding
This research was made possible through the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through ALLRP566285.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Torabi, M., Evins, R. Towards net-zero carbon buildings: Investigating the impact of early-stage structure design on building embodied carbon. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-024-02287-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-024-02287-w