Life-Cycle Assessment of Office Buildings in Europe and the United States
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 12, Issue 1
Abstract
Office buildings are thought to be significant sources of energy use and emissions in industrialized countries, but quantitative assessments of all of the phases of the service life of office buildings are still quite rare. In order to enable environmentally conscious design and management, this paper presents life-cycle assessments of newly constructed European and U.S. office buildings from materials production through construction, use, and maintenance to end-of-life treatment. The significant environmental aspects indicate the dominance of the use phase in the quantified environmental categories, but draw attention to the importance of embedded materials and expected maintenance investments throughout the assumed 50-year service life, especially for particulate matter emissions. The relevance of the materials, construction, maintenance, and end-of-life phases relative to the use of buildings is expected to increase considerably as functional obsolescence of office buildings becomes more rapid, and complete reconstruction and reconfiguration become more frequent. By quantifying the energy use and environmental emissions of each life-cycle phase in more detail, the elements that cause significant emissions can be identified and targeted for improvement.
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Acknowledgments
S.J. wishes to thank TEKES (National Technology Agency of Finland) for funding this research. A.H. is grateful for the support of a Career Grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems, and a Technologies for Sustainable Enterprise grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.NSF
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Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 12 • Issue 1 • March 2006
Pages: 10 - 17
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 3, 2003
Accepted: Mar 31, 2004
Published online: Mar 1, 2006
Published in print: Mar 2006
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