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Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment and Green Building

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Building".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2024) | Viewed by 6723

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Svetlana Pushkar

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Guest Editor

Department of Civil Engineering, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel
Interests: green building; life-cycle assessment; green architecture; green building materials; green rating systems; urban green infrastructures

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a new Special Issue, "Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment and Green Building”, of the journal Sustainability. It is well known that the terms "life cycle assessment" (LCA) and "green building" were introduced in the second half of the 20th century. Despite the fact that LCA became widespread in green buildings at the beginning of the 21st century, there are nevertheless scientific areas that still require intensive research. In this context, this Special Issue aims to attract original, high-quality articles and reviews on the implementation of LCA in green buildings.

Prospective authors may submit contributions dealing with, but not limited to, the following:

At the level of building materials: the replacement of individual components of cement/concrete/reinforced concrete with waste or by-products.
At the building structural level: the replacement of a reinforced concrete structure with a wooden one.
At the non-structural level: the examination of a longer life of non-structural components to mitigate maintenance activities.
At the envelope level: the examination of the impact of green walls, green roofs, photovoltaic systems, and differing architectural forms for reducing building operating energy.
At the urban level: the current trend of urban green infrastructure planning using LCA in modern architecture and urban planning.
The wide use of LCA in historical/heritage building energy retrofits and the seismic retrofitting of existing buildings.
The analysis of, for example, LEED or BREEAM projects in terms of the “triple bottom line” and LCA.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Svetlana Pushkar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

building energy-simulation
energy retrofitting
green architecture
green cement
green concrete
green rating systems
recycled aggregates
seismic retrofitting
strengthening
wood

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 801 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Life-Cycle Assessment of LEED-CI v4 Projects in Shanghai, China: A Case Study

by Svetlana Pushkar

Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 5722; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15075722 - 24 Mar 2023

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1428

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore green office building certification strategies in Shanghai. The 45 LEED-CI v4 gold-certified office space projects were sorted by energy and atmosphere credit (EAc6, optimize energy performance) into two groups: 15 projects with the lowest EAc6 achievement (Group 1) and 15 projects with the highest EAc6 achievement (Group 2). To reach the gold certification level in Group 1, high achievement in EAc6 is associated with low achievement in two indoor environmental quality credits (EQc2, low-emitting materials, and EQc8, quality views), while in Group 2, low achievement in EAc6 is associated with high achievement in EQc2 and EQ8. For the life-cycle assessment (LCA), the functional unit was designated as follows: production (P) stage: production of building materials needed to ensure the requirements of EQc2 and EQc8 for 1 m² of the building area; and operational energy (OE) stage: OE of 1 m² of the building area over 50 years of the building’s lifetime. For the OE stage, two fuel source scenarios were used: 71.07% coal + 28.08% natural gas + 0.81% wind power (WP) + 0.04% photovoltaic (PV) (Scenario 1) and 50% WP + 50% PV (Scenario 2). The results of the LCA (P + OE) showed that under Scenario 1, the LEED certification strategy in Group 1 was greener than that in Group 2. When using Scenario 2, no differences were found between the two groups. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment and Green Building)

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16 pages, 1486 KiB

Open AccessArticle

LEED-CI v4 Projects in Terms of Life Cycle Assessment in Manhattan, New York City: A Case Study

by Svetlana Pushkar

Sustainability 2023, 15(3), 2360; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032360 - 28 Jan 2023

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1481

Abstract

Over the last decade, it has been clearly shown that the same achievements in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects can lead to different life cycle assessments (LCAs). However, the problem of contradictory achievements in LEED and LCA has not yet been resolved. This study aimed to identify and evaluate different strategies for LEED projects using LCAs. Thirty-nine LEED projects with the same characteristics—location and transportation, rating system, rating version, certification level, and space type—were collected and sorted by their energy and atmosphere (EA) category, “optimize energy performance” credit (EAc6) achievement into three equal groups (EA_Low, EA_Medium, and EA_High, where each group includes 13 LEED projects) to minimize the influence of uncontrolled factors on the LEED project strategy. The author focused on two extreme groups with very different EAc6 credit scores: EA_Low (13 projects) and EA_High (13 projects). The groups were compared across LEED categories and credits. Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney and Cliff’s

δ

test results showed that the EA_Low and EA_High groups are associated with high/low achievements in materials-related credits such as “interiors life cycle impact reduction”, “building product disclosure and optimization—material ingredients”, and “low-emitting materials”. As a result, the EA_Low and EA_High groups were reclassified into Energy_Low–Materials_High and Energy_high–Materials_Low certification strategy groups. In this context, LCAs were used to assess the differences between the two strategies. The results showed that if natural gas was used for operational energy (OE), the Energy_High–Materials_Low strategy showed lower environmental damage compared to the Energy_Low–Materials_High strategy (

p

= 0.0635); meanwhile, if photovoltaic energy was used for OE, the Energy_Low–Materials_High strategy showed lower environmental damage compared to the Energy_High–Materials_Low strategy (

p

= 0.0036). The author recommends using the LEED protocol and the LCA method in parallel to better reflect the environmental impact of different certification strategies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment and Green Building)

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20 pages, 3938 KiB

Open AccessArticle

External Shading Devices: Should the Energy Standard Be Supplemented with a Production Stage?

by Svetlana Pushkar and Abraham Yezioro

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12690; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912690 - 06 Oct 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1598

Abstract

The Israeli Standard SI5282 rates buildings according to the operational energy (OE) used to support their heating, cooling, and lighting needs. When it was proposed, OE was generally considered to be derived from fossil fuels, such as coal. However, at present, Israel is in the process of transitioning to cleaner energy sources, such as natural gas and renewables. In light of this change, the question that guided this study was as follows: should the production (P) stage of external shading devices be taken into account alongside the OE stage? In this study, we aimed to evaluate the P (environmental damage) and OE (environmental benefit) of five external shading devices with equivalently high energy rates that were installed in a typical office building using cleaner OE sources. We evaluated the environmental impacts using the ReCiPe2016 method. The results indicated that the P stage of the five shading devices led to significantly different degrees of environmental damage, thus reducing the environmental benefits related to the OE stage. Therefore, the five similarly rated shading devices could no longer be considered as equivalent sustainable alternatives. As such, we recommend that the energy rating be supplemented with a P stage environmental evaluation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment and Green Building)

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18 pages, 998 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Life-Cycle Assessment in the LEED-CI v4 Categories of Location and Transportation (LT) and Energy and Atmosphere (EA) in California: A Case Study of Two Strategies for LEED Projects

by Svetlana Pushkar

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10893; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710893 - 31 Aug 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1642

Abstract

This study aimed to identify different certification strategies for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Commercial Interior version 4 (LEED-CI v4) gold-certified office projects in California’s cities and to explore these certification strategies using life-cycle assessments (LCAs). The LEED-CI v4 data were divided into two groups: high- and low-achievement groups in the Location and Transportation (LT) category. The author identified two strategies for achieving the same level of certification across LEED-CI v4 projects: (1) high achievements in LT (LT_High) and low achievements in the Energy and Atmosphere (EA) category (EA_Low), and (2) low achievements in the LT category (LT_Low) and high achievements in EA (EA_High). The author adopted LT_High–EA_Low and LT_Low–EA_High achievements as functional units for LCA. Three alternatives were LT_High: typical bus, EA_Low: gas; LT_Low: typical car, EA_High: gas; and LT_Low: eco-friendly car, EA_High: gas, where a typical bus used diesel, a typical car used natural gas, an eco-friendly car used EURO5diesel, and natural gas was used as a building’s operational energy. The ReCiPe2016 results showed that the LT_High: typical bus, EA_Low: gas strategy was preferable from a short-term perspective, and the LT_Low: eco-friendly car, EA_High: gas strategy was preferable in a long-term and an infinite time perspective, while the LT_Low: typical car, EA_High: gas strategy continued to be the most environmentally damaging certification strategy for all the time horizons of the existing pollutants. Thus, it can be concluded that if there are alternative strategies for LEED certification, an analysis of their LCAs can be useful to refine the best sustainable strategy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Prospects in Life Cycle Assessment and Green Building)

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