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Life Cycle Assessments for Buildings (LCA)

Writer's picture: Build Environmental Build Environmental

(Please note there is a summary at the end in case you are short on time)


Hey folks!!Its been a really busy time for me of late, summer really got away from me fast and all of a sudden its nearly Christmas. (how did that happen?) I ended up getting swamped with a few “hands on'“ building projects, and as always things took WAY longer than expected. I should know better by now. Hence the reason you’ve been lacking embodied carbon content in your inbox recently. Apologies


Good news is… We’re back and better than ever!


Today’s topic is Life Cycle Assessments for Buildings

For those who are unfamiliar with LCA’s, here’s a quick rundown…


*Building Life-Cycle Assessment analyses all the environmental impacts a building contributes to throughout its life, from cradle to grave. In order to calculate the Embodied Carbon of a building or even a product we follow a Life Cycle Assessment Methodology (or an LCA). 


LCA – or life-cycle assessment – is a science-based methodology for quantifying lifetime environmental impacts. It is defined by a set of international standards that ensure consistency, reliability, and transparency. 


A lot of these impacts come from embodied carbon, which is all the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the creation, maintenance & eventual end of life of a building or infrastructure project. These impacts are often not so obvious, such as all the emissions it takes to mine, transport, and process a piece of steel before it’s even used in your building. As our energy grids are being decarbonized, the impact of operational carbon is being reduced, and therefore, embodied carbon is playing an increasingly significant role in the decarbonization of our built environment.


In building LCA, we categorize emissions across four life cycle stages: A through to D – from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal. We have product stages A1-A3, construction stages A4-A5, use stage B1-B5, and end-of-life stage C1-C4, as well as any benefits beyond the system boundary of an LCA, which are attributed to the D stage. Additionally depending on the scope of your project, you can also assess the operational stages of Energy Consumption B6 and Water Consumption B7”



To calculate the final results of your LCA, you’ll add up the emissions from all of the life-cycle stages to get the total impacts for your project. This is typically referenced in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (kgCO2e) if we’re focusing on Global Warming Potential (GWP), but we can also get results for other impact categories such as acidification or ozone depletion.


The results of our LCA can help us to identify emissions hotspots and find ways to reduce impact, at all stages of a project.


*Text and graphic Courtesy of One Click LCA.


OK, so now that we’re up to speed on LCA’s, it gives me great pleasure to announce that since our last newsletter we’ve been busy behind the scenes in training and we are now a certified Life Cycle Assessment specialist. We have invested our time and our hard earned into software to make this service available to you.


LCA’s are really the next step for me as an embodied carbon specialist. Before now, our main focus has been on emissions associated with the ‘product stage’ of building materials (A1-A3). As we are now well aware this only accounts for a portion of the overall embodied carbon pie. Although A1-A3 emissions equate for approx. 60-70% of all embodied carbon emissions, its been dawning on us over the past little while that we have been missing important piece of the entire package. Construction emissions, use stage emissions (maintenance and replacement) and end of life emissions play a significant role in the whole embodied carbon picture. Now I can finally say we are covering all bases.

Another area where we haven’t been able to account for until now is MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing service) emissions. We are very excited to start digging into this as well.


Please note that embodied carbon regulation in now being implemented in Vancouver, California and Toronto amongst other areas, and is now requiring an LCA upon building permit application. (This is a whole other topic for a different newsletter.) Its just a matter of time before this funnels into all building projects around the country.


We are super excited to be digging deeper into embodied carbon and building LCA’s. If you would like a demonstration of what type of information or what an LCA report may look like for your organization please reach out.


And as always please comment or email me back your thoughts or questions, I always love hearing from you guys.


Mike


Summary

  • LCA’s are an important piece to the overall building emissions puzzle. They analyze all the environmental impacts a building contributes to throughout its life.

  • Build Environmental is now certified to provide LCA’s using global industry leading software, One Click LCA.

  • LCA’s will be the key documentation required to meet new building industry regulation (already happening in Vancouver)

  • Up until now we have only been accounting for product stage or upfront emissions A1-A3. We now have the ability to account for the every life cycle stage of a building, including: construction stages A4-A5, use stage B1-B5, and end-of-life stage C1-C4

  • We can now provide the embodied carbon associated with MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing service) emissions.


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