Downsizing and the use of timber as embodied carbon reduction strategies for new-build housing: A partial life cycle assessment

The 2050 decarbonization goals coupled with the growing housing shortage in Europe intensify the pressure on new-build dwellings to enhance their energy performance. Beyond a zero operational energy, the focus has shifted towards reducing embodied carbon (EC). Against this backdrop, this study investigates the simultaneous impact of downsizing...

Environmental design guidelines for circular building components based on LCA and MFA: Lessons from the circular kitchen and renovation façade

The transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) in the built environment is vital to reduce environmental impacts, resource consumption and waste generation. The built environment can be made circular by replacing building components with more circular ones. There are many circular design options for building components and knowledge about...

A Circular Economy Life Cycle Assessment (CE-LCA) model for building components

The transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) in the built environment is vital to reduce resource consumption, emissions and waste generation. To support the development of circular building components, assessment metrics are needed. Previous work identified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an important method to analyse the environmental...

Integration of Energy and Material Performance of Buildings: I=E+M

A new methodology is proposed to assess integral performance of building with respect to energy and materials requirement over the building life cycle. Because the method builds on existing methods for Energy Performance and Materials Performance of Buildings, as defined by Dutch National Building Code, it provides an easily applicable method...

Effects of the life span of products in LCA - A case study for dwellings