Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.
Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.
J Environ Manage. 2020 May 1;261:110230. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110230. Epub 2020 Mar 2.
In recent years, considerable efforts have been devoted to minimizing the environmental consequences from building industry globally, as the industry is notorious for its significant resource consumption and environmental emissions. However, due to a lack of data representativeness in many parts of the world, considerable variations were observed among studies, and thus makes life cycle assessment (LCA) results difficult for the decision-making purpose. In addition, the selection of low impact materials and the management of end-of-life building waste are the most important concern. By considering several strategies including data representativeness, low carbon material, and end-of-life building waste management, this study aimed to enhance the accuracy of such assessment and sustainability performance of building. An integrated LCA framework is proposed for implementing those strategies through a case specific high-rise residential building in Hong Kong. Based on case-specific/regional data, carbon emission of building was evaluated with a cradle-to-construction system boundary with the functional unit of 1 m of gross floor area using the IMPACT 2002+ method, and then compared to that of selecting generic databases under different scenarios. The results demonstrate that the application of case-specific and generic data would significantly influence the outcomes of the case study, as the deviations of certain magnitudes were mostly derived from different building materials that it can lead to an underestimation of carbon emissions of up to 28%. Along with using alternative materials, the adoption of the proposed materials cycling and resource recovery approach at the end-of-life building could lead to a reduction of 14% of the total emissions (i.e. excluding the use and renovation of building). The results would support data selection for accuracy of evaluation which can be used as benchmark where recognized database is not available and promote sustainability performance of buildings locally, while the proposed framework could be adopted for comprehensive evaluation globally.
近年来，人们为了尽量减少建筑行业对环境的影响做出了相当大的努力，因为该行业以其大量的资源消耗和环境排放而臭名昭著。然而，由于世界上许多地方的数据代表性不足，研究之间存在很大差异，因此生命周期评估（LCA）的结果难以用于决策目的。此外，选择低影响材料和管理建筑寿命终结废物是最重要的关注点。本研究考虑了几种策略，包括数据代表性、低碳材料和建筑寿命终结废物管理，旨在提高此类评估的准确性和建筑的可持续性表现。通过在香港的一个特定高层住宅建筑案例中提出了一个综合的 LCA 框架，以实施这些策略。基于特定案例/地区的数据，采用从摇篮到施工的系统边界，使用 IMPACT 2002+方法，以每 1 平方米总建筑面积为功能单位，评估建筑的碳排放，并在不同情景下与选择通用数据库进行比较。结果表明，特定案例和通用数据的应用会显著影响案例研究的结果，因为某些数量级的偏差主要来自不同的建筑材料，这可能导致碳排放的低估高达 28%。除了使用替代材料外，在建筑寿命终结时采用建议的材料循环和资源回收方法可以减少 14%的总排放量（即不包括建筑的使用和翻新）。这些结果将支持为评估准确性选择数据，可作为缺乏公认数据库时的基准，并促进当地建筑的可持续性表现，而建议的框架可在全球范围内用于综合评估。
