Life cycle assessment of buildings and city quarters comparing demolition and reconstruction with refurbishment

In the building sector, the energy and the greenhouse gases embodied in the building materials arebecoming increasingly important. Combined with the operational primary energy demand and the end-of-life, the whole life cycle of buildings can be assessed.In this paper, a comprehensive method for calculating the life cycle of individual buildings is pre-sented. First, their material composition has been determined and generic values for the embodiedenergy, embodied greenhouse gases, energy needed and greenhouse gases emitted during disposal ofthe different building materials have been calculated. Subsequently these values have been integratedinto an urban energy simulation software to simulate energy and emission values for buildings.A given building geometry with four different building standards was considered. The results can helpto decide between building refurbishment or demolition and new construction. For example it could beshown that the share of the life cycle stage production compared to the total value rises with a betterbuilding insulation standard, as the share of the use stage decreases. The highest building refurbishmentstandard resulted in the best life cycle performance when compared with less ambitious refurbishmentor construction of a new building of today’s standards.     «

In the building sector, the energy and the greenhouse gases embodied in the building materials arebecoming increasingly important. Combined with the operational primary energy demand and the end-of-life, the whole life cycle of buildings can be assessed.In this paper, a comprehensive method for calculating the life cycle of individual buildings is pre-sented. First, their material composition has been determined and generic values for the embodiedenergy, embodied greenhouse gases, energy needed...     »