- Email: [email protected]
Critical consideration of buildings' environmental impact assessment towards adoption of circular economy: An analytical review
Accepted Manuscript Critical consideration of buildings' environmental impact assessment towards adoption of circular economy: An analytical review Md. Uzzal Hossain, S. Thomas Ng PII:
S0959-6526(18)32840-3
DOI:
10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.120
Reference:
JCLP 14255
To appear in:
Journal of Cleaner Production
Received Date: 24 April 2018 Revised Date:
11 August 2018
Accepted Date: 14 September 2018
Please cite this article as: Hossain MU, Ng ST, Critical consideration of buildings' environmental impact assessment towards adoption of circular economy: An analytical review, Journal of Cleaner Production (2018), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.120. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Critical Consideration of Buildings’ Environmental Impact Assessment towards
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Adoption of Circular Economy: An Analytical Review
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Md. Uzzal Hossain, S. Thomas Ng* Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong Corresponding author: Tel. (852) 2857 8556, Email. [email protected]
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Abstract: A rapid development of building environmental research from the globe is
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witnessed in recent years to deal with the environmental issues, especially in terms of
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energy consumption and carbon emissions, due to the substantial environmental
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burdens associated with the building industry. Thus, numerous scientific efforts have
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been devoted to buildings through environmental assessment like a life cycle
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assessment (LCA) and a methodological framework development. Concerning the
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rapid growth of buildings, LCA is increasingly used for assessing and mitigating the
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associated environmental impacts from material selection to the whole building
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systems. This study aims to comprehensively review the LCA implication on
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buildings by discussing the contemporary issues related to the development of this
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research field. The study considers a wide range of literature including case studies,
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reviews and surveys, and these articles are critically examined according to the
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predefined criteria developed. An in-depth analysis is also conducted on selected
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studies to unveil the criticality of the assessments and results under different
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considerations. In addition to demonstrating the research gaps for comprehensive
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assessment of buildings, the adoption of a circular economy (CE) concept is
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highlighted by providing a comprehensive framework. The findings show that
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resource recovery and resource-efficient building construction are seldom considered
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in prevailing studies. As a result, the framework proposed in this paper should help
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support a paradigm shift towards a comprehensive research for increasing the
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accuracy and practicability by introducing the CE principle to the building industry
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for enhancing its sustainability performance.
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Keywords: Buildings; Life cycle assessment; Environmental impacts; Circular
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economy; Analytical review.
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1. Introduction Life cycle assessment (LCA) is now extensively used for assessing buildings and
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built environment’s environmental impacts due to an increasing concern on resource
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utilization for building construction; energy consumption during their operation;
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waste disposal at end-of-life of buildings; and their associated environmental
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consequences. Owing to a boost in building construction globally, their operation,
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maintenance / refurbishment and deconstruction would impose even higher
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environmental burdens. Therefore, the building industry is the key target for reducing
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the environmental impacts by many governments as a result of the enhanced
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sustainability concern (Chau et al., 2015). It has already been recognized that the
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industry is responsible for consuming over 32% of the world’s resources, 25% water,
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40% energy and 12% land, and it also generates over 25% solid waste and emits about
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35% of the total greenhouse gases (GHGs) globally (Yeheyis et al., 2013; Soust-
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Verdaguer et al., 2017).
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Numerous efforts have been initiated to evaluate the environmental performance
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of different aspects related to this field, including the whole buildings, materials used,
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components / units and systems (e.g. construction process), and to find out
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opportunities for reducing their environmental impacts using the LCA technique. As a
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result, the publications related to the case studies of buildings’ LCA have more than
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doubled over the last 10 years. Moreover, the number of review papers are
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simultaneously increasing to contribute in this progressive field (Anand and Amor,
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2017).
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Environmental impacts assessment of building materials has been performed by
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numerous studies (Zhang et al., 2014; Hossain et al., 2017-2018). Several studies
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focused on a specific stage of the buildings, such as the materials production (Zhang
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and Wang, 2016), building construction (Gan et al., 2017), renovation (Ghose et al.,
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2017; Rodrigues et al., 2018), demolition and end-of-life treatment (Coelho and de
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Brito, 2012; Vitale et al., 2017), and the building stocks (Stephan et al., 2018).
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Many research also specifically targeted building energy consumption, including
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embodied energy (Koezjakov et al., 2018), life cycle energy (Monteiro et al., 2016),
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operational stage of buildings (Ginks and Painter, 2016). Some of them concentrated
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on the carbon footprint (Sandanayake et al., 2018), embodied carbon (Gan et al.,
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2017) and life cycle carbon (Roh and Tae, 2017) of buildings. In addition, few studies
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highlighted the assessment of both energy and carbon (Kneifel et al., 2018), whereas 2
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others proposed comprehensive assessment of buildings by integrating LCA with
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multiple impact indicators (Heinonen et al., 2016). Moreover, a few studies examined the dynamics in LCA of buildings (Basbagill et
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al., 2017) and LCA of prefabricated buildings (Cao et al., 2015), whereas a few
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addressed the construction methods (Ji et al., 2018). A number of studies focused on
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residential buildings (Roh et al., 2017; Hoxha et al., 2017), some of them were on
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commercial buildings (Al-Ghamdi and Bilec, 2017) and a few were on educational
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(Kumanayake and Luo, 2018) and office buildings (Wu et al., 2012).
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Some other criteria were used in assessing the environmental impacts of buildings,
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including the principal raw materials, such as reinforced concrete (Guo et al., 2017),
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steel (Su and Zhang, 2016) and wood (Gustavsson et al., 2010) with due consideration
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of the variation in building levels, including high-rise (Su and Zhang, 2016), low-rise
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(Passer et al., 2012) etc. throughout the world.
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A series of reviews was available in this research field, and most of them were
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subjective in selecting related papers. For example, the embodied carbon of buildings
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(Pomponi and Moncaster, 2018), life cycle carbon and energy of building (Chau et al.,
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2015), embodied energy of buildings (Dixit, 2017), environmental evaluation of
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buildings (Anand and Amor, 2017), building refurbishment (Vilches et al., 2017),
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BIM-based LCA applications (Soust-Verdaguer et al., 2017), LCA tools (Tam et al.,
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2018), bibliometric analysis (Geng et al., 2017), prefabricated buildings (Teng et al.,
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2018), etc. Although some important research gaps were highlighted from different
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perspectives of building assessment, none of those studies has considered integrating
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a circular economy (CE) with LCA for more sustainable building construction. Some
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critical factors, including the materials supply chain and sourcing, identification of
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low impacts materials, whole life assessment of buildings including demolition,
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salvage value of materials under the CE principle have not been considered. The CE
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principle aims to improve the efficiency of materials and energy usage by sourcing
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sustainable materials and integrating collaborative benefits among different industries
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(Akanbi et al., 2018; Herczeg et al., 2018).
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All these studies have provided valuable information in better understanding the
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research on buildings’ LCA. However, it is still valuable to unveil the research trends,
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practices and highlights in terms of the way of assessment, and different
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considerations and research from the abundance of publications. As a result, this study
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aims (i) to identify the existing research scope of buildings’ LCA by critically 3
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT reviewing the relevant literature published from 2010 to February 2018; (ii) to
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highlight the trend of research and different considerations through a general mapping
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of the selected papers and by critically analyzing the selected case studies; and (iii) to
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identify the knowledge gaps for comprehensive assessment of buildings, adoption of
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the CE concept by critically analyzing the selected case studies and review papers,
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and by providing a comprehensive framework for further research. Agenda and
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framework proposed in this study will generate useful inputs for future research on
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buildings’ LCA and for enhancing sustainability in the building industry as a whole.
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2. Study methodology
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This review aimed at providing a holistic overview by bringing those fragmented
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research together into a multidisciplinary approach in order to minimize the
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environmental impacts and improve the sustainability performance of buildings.
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2.1. Literature search
A systematic review approach together with a meta-analysis were used to review
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the existing papers to ensure the comprehensiveness and objectivity of the papers
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selected. The systematic review synthesizes the research by collating all evidence that
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fits the pre-specified eligibility criteria, where the meta-analysis explains the results
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from individual studies and integrate the findings (Teng et al., 2018). These
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approaches have been widely adopted in the building industry in recent years (Dixit,
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2017). A two-stage search approach was applied in this study. In the first stage, the
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Web of Science and Scopus databases were used for searching relevant literature
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using the predefined and specific keywords, including life cycle assessment, carbon
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emission, greenhouse gases emission, environmental impacts, building, residential
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building, circular economy, building, construction, building industry, environmental
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consequences, public building, commercial building, built environment, and
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construction industry. A non-systematic retrieval, such
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investigation was conducted to include any additional related papers. Finally, a
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Google search was performed using the above-mentioned keywords to retrieve
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additional relevant papers published in other peer-reviewed journals. Due to an
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increase of scientific publications in this field, only papers published in the peer-
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reviewed journals between 2010 and February 2018 were considered in this study.
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The outline of the study method is shown in Fig. 1.
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2.2. Screening of the reviewed papers After identifying the potentially relevant papers, all the papers had to go through a
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filtration process based on the screening of titles and abstracts to identify those papers
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which closely match the scope of this study. During the filtration process, papers
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related to energy assessment and/or simulation of buildings only, and the assessment
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of materials level alone were excluded from the study. In addition, papers published
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in conferences, technical reports, thesis, books and book chapters were eliminated due
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to large number of scientific publications in the peer-reviewed journals. After
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removing the duplication from the collected papers, the remaining literature were analyzed in full-text to select the appropriate articles for classification and review.
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2.3. Classification of the reviewed papers
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Of the 256 papers retrieved, 230 were related to buildings while 37 were related to CE
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(primarily on CE methodology, buildings or construction). After examining the
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abstract of the papers, 181 papers were selected for further study with 155 papers
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directly related to buildings being used for in-depth analysis and general mapping.
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Among these 155 papers, 36 were case study type and 19 of them were selected for
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comparative analysis based on their comprehensiveness as they contained sufficient
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information to fulfill the scope of this study. The papers were selected based on some
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criteria, i.e. they contain clear information on the system boundary, functional unit,
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life time, types and level of building, types of LCA and method used, principal
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building materials, sensitivity analysis, waste management consideration, and
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highlight of at least one environmental impact indicator as a result of the study. In
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addition, the literature (26 out of 37 papers) related to CE were separately analyzed
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thoroughly in a separate section (primarily related to the fundamental of CE and its
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applications, CE in building and construction, etc.). In this study, 81 studies (chosen
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from a total of 256) were delineated for critical analysis based on several pre-defined
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criteria, in which 36 were related building related case specific LCA, 19 were related
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to building’s LCA review, and 26 were related to CE. It is believed that the selection
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of 32% of study for comprehensive analysis is enough for the completeness of data
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collection from a large sample (Fig. 1).
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2.4. General mapping of the literature A total 15 criteria were developed for general mapping of literature. The criteria
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include the type of buildings, building topography, location, LCA boundary, scope in
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building, type of LCA, research method, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method,
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life cycle inventory (LCI) data, impact categories, significant impacts, life time
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consideration, principle building materials, waste management consideration, and
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sensitivity / uncertainty analysis. The criteria provided significant insights for
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identifying the research topics which have been published previously, and also for
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understanding the importance and necessitate of research in this area according to the
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temporal and spatial contexts. In addition, the mapping can be effectively used for
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cross-context comparison (Teng et al., 2018).
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2.5. Discussion and future research direction
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Based on the general mapping of literature, the selected case study papers, the
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reviewed literature and CE related papers, an in-depth investigation was conducted to
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identify the existing research trends and areas, different considerations, and research /
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knowledge gap. Finally, an effective comparison of results was provided, and future
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research direction was identified accordingly to encourage more comprehensive
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adoption of CE into the building industry.
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 1 Objectives of the study
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Search targeted literature
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Using • Keywords • Publication years
Systematic search
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Screening for identifying the eligible literature (retrieved 256)
Exclude conference papers, reports and thesis
Selected 181 papers in general
General mapping using 15 predefined criteria
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13 14 15 16 17 18
Analysis for further investigation (using 11 selected variables)
Selected 19 relevant review papers
Analysis of CE adoption
Overview and comprehensive analysis
Discussion (important findings and comparisons, critical analysis and considerations, analyzing gaps, providing framework for comprehensiveness and adoption of CE) and conclusions
Fig. 1. Outline of the study methodology.
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Selected 26 papers related to CE
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Selected 36 papers for analysis (based on comprehensiveness)
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General search
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3. General mapping of the literature
A total of 155 literature directly related to LCA of buildings were selected for
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general mapping to identify the areas of research interests, considerations and trends
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of research direction in the scientific community (studies given in the Supplementary
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Information: Studies used in General Mapping).
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3.1. Temporal trends
The number of publications has significantly increase in the past years indicating
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that the research related to this topic has attracted huge attention from the scientific
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community due to an increasing environmental concern in the building industry (Fig.
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2; considered papers published in 2018 is not included). This may be due to a growing
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concern of fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions given rise by energy
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generation, as well as a particular concern over climate change in recent years
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globally (Geng et al., 2017; Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017). In addition, promoting
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sustainability concern in the building industry due to an increasing building
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construction and resource diminution is the main focused in this research field, and
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thus, the number of scientific contributions is increasing accordingly.
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Number of papers
35 30 25 20 15
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2011
2014
2015
2016
2017
Fig. 2. Selected buildings’ LCA papers published from 2010 to 2017.
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2013
Studied year
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2012
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3.2. Spatial trends
The spatial pattern of publications has been changing linearly (based on the
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selected papers in this study). It can be seen that Europe leads the number of LCA
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study of buildings (about 48%), while Asia, North America, Oceania and South
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America were about 31%, 14%, 6% and 1%, respectively. However, most of the
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publications related to buildings were from North America and Europe up to 2014
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(Cabeza et al., 2014; Geng et al., 2017). Due to construction boosting and increasing
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sustainability concern in Asia, relevant research has gained increasing attention in
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recent years. Based on the selected papers and year of publications, it can be seen that
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the top five publications were from USA, China, Portugal, UK and South Korea,
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respectively (Fig. 3).
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Fig. 3. Selected buildings’ LCA papers published in different regions.
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3.3. Buildings category
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Residential buildings were the key scientific interests, as more than 60% of the
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studies focused on residential buildings (e.g. Hoxha et al., 2017; Sibilio et al., 2017),
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and only few were on non-residential buildings (12%) (e.g. Onat et al., 2014; Al-
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Ghamdi and Bilec, 2017). The rest are on common type of buildings (i.e. unspecified
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but primarily focusing on the components / units of buildings or those surveys based
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studies) (e.g. Zhao et al., 2018). For the purpose of this study, 1-5 stories was
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considered low-rise, whereas 6-10 stories being mid-rise and higher than 10 stories
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was regarded high-rise building. Nearly half of the studies concentrated on low-rise
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buildings (mostly from Europe) (e.g. Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic, 2012; Chastas et
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al., 2017), and about 23%, 15% and 15% focused on high-rise mostly from Asia (e.g.
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Gan et al., 2017; Roh and Tae, 2017), mid-rise (e.g. Atmaca, 2016b; Lee et al., 2017)
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and unspecified (related to survey and review) (e.g. Stephan et al., 2018),
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respectively. In addition, about 80% of the studies considered the whole building
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assessment as compared to 13% on building components (e.g. Schwartz et al., 2018)
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and 7% on different units of building (e.g. Silvestre et al., 2013) (Fig. 4).
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3.4. LCA perspectives
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Among the selected papers, about 63% were case-specific studies (e.g. Dong et
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al., 2015; Atmaca, 2016b; Rodrigues et al., 2018), 15% were survey type studies (e.g.
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Giesekam et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2018), 15% were literature review (e.g. De Wolf et 9
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT al., 2017; Schwartz et al., 2018) and 7% were others. Regarding the life cycle stage
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consideration, about 22%, 13% and 45% of the studies considered the cradle-to-gate,
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cradle-to-site and cradle-to-grave system boundaries respectively, while 2% of the
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studies considered the cradle-to-cradle system boundary and 13% only focused on
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renovation. Although 45% of the studies considered ‘cradle-to-grave’ system
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boundary into their assessment, most of them did not critically consider the waste
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treatment (and resource recovery) at different stages of building. Some of them
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considered waste treatment at end-of-life stage only.
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About 61% of the building LCA studies have focused on assessing the impacts of
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residential buildings, while only 18% for non-residential (office, educational and
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office) buildings, and the rest were mostly on the component / unit of buildings. In
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addition, about 45%, 17%, 8% and 30% of the studies were conducted based on a
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processed-based LCA, input-out LCA (Onat et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2016), hybrid
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LCA (Moon et al., 2014; Jang et al., 2015) and unspecified (mainly the review
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studies). Regarding the impact assessment method, more than half of the study did not
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specify the method as they calculated the impact (mostly carbon or energy
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consumption) by developed equations. However, CML, IPCC, ReCiPe and TRACI
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were the most common LCIA methods used in the selected studies. This may be due
19
to the freedom of authors in selecting methodology for LCA studies, or individual
20
preference and objectives of the studies. Most of the results were also supported by
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previous studies (Chastas et al., 2018). In addition, more than half of the studies
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assessed single (carbon, energy or both) impact (Hong et al., 2017; Gan et al., 2017)
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and 42% assessed multiple impact indicators (Silvestre et al., 2013; Sibilio et al.,
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2017) (Fig. 4). Regarding the life cycle inventory data, nearly half of the studies
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directly adopted databases in their assessment, whereas only 9% used first-hand data,
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secondary sources by 31% studies, and 15% applied combined of first-hand,
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secondary source and databases. The results indicate that comprehensive evaluation
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by extending to the full life cycle of buildings or further extending to cradle-to-cradle
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towards the adoption of the CE principle was still rare in many studies.
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Fig. 4. General mapping of the selected studies.
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3.5. Life span consideration
Comparison of results among different studies is often difficult under various
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considerations, especially in terms of the life span consideration. The service life of
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materials and components could lead to a potential variation in the results, with lower
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environmental impacts indicating higher life expectancy values (Chastas et al., 2018).
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Due to a wide variety of life time selection, this study classified all the papers into
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seven groups (Fig. 5). Based on the classifications, about 65% of the studies chose a
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41-50 years’ life span of buildings, and less than 30 years by 10% (Kua and Wong,
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2012), 51-60 years by 8% (Hafliger et al., 2017), 61-70% years by 5% (Vitale et al.,
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2017; Kneifel et al., 2018), 71-80 years by 6% (Hu, 2017), and more than 80 years by
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only 4% (Lewandowska et al., 2015) (Fig. 5).
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5%
4% 10% 2% >30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 >80
8%
65%
Consideration of life time of buildings
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Fig. 5. Buildings life span consideration by the selected studies.
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3.6. Waste management consideration in buildings assessment
The management of waste generated from construction, renovation and end-of-life
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of buildings is very important for resource recovery and the adoption of the CE
7
principle into the building industry. Yet, most of the studies (about 69%) did not
8
consider waste management in their assessment (Atmaca, 2016a,b; Al-Ghamdi and
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Bilec, 2017). Some of them took waste management into consideration at the end-of-
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life stage only (about 27%) (Collinge et al., 2013; Hoxha et al., 2017), and a few at
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the renovation stage (Schwartz et al., 2018; Stephan et al., 2018) (Fig. 6). Most
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importantly, waste generation during the construction stage was not considered in
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most of the studies (Dahlstrøm et al., 2012), despite a significant wastage level was
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recorded at the construction stage. For example, about 15% of the wastage level was
15
recorded in the UK (Barker, 2008), whereas a significant amount of construction
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waste was generated during the construction process in Hong Kong (about 0.48-0.60
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m3/m2 of the construction floor area) (CIC, 2017).
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Renovati on stage 3%
Construct ion stage 1%
End-oflife stage 27%
Not considere d 69%
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Fig. 6. Consideration of waste management in buildings LCA studies.
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4. Analysis of the selected literature
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4.1. General features It has already been stated that 36 papers were selected for in-depth analysis, based
4
on their comprehensiveness in terms of coverage throughout the world from
5
residential to non-residential (i.e. commercial, office and educational) buildings, with
6
different climates and building heights. Even though plenty of relevant literature are
7
available, a lack of detailed descriptions, results and other considerations have led to
8
their exclusion from this analysis. The samples are assumed to be large enough to
9
capture the general research directions and different considerations in buildings’ LCA
10
study. However, comparability is an important issue that usually relates to high
11
uncertainty in the LCA study. Based on the predefined criteria (which is supported by
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different studies (Geng et al., 2017; Chastas et al., 2018), the details of the selected
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papers are presented in Table 1.
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Similar to the general mapping presented in Section 3.3, LCA research is
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dominated by the residential buildings (Roh et al., 2017), and a few are on
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commercial (Hong et al., 2015), office (Gan et al., 2017) and educational buildings
17
(Kumanayake and Luo, 2018). There are three major types of LCA being considered
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in building LCAs, including the process-based method, input-output (I-O) method,
19
and hybrid method. Process-based method is relatively straightforward that can
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provide more accurate results, but it depends on the data from system processes.
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While the I-O method can handle high quality data, it requires the maintenance of a
22
comprehensive set of input / output data. In some studies, these methods were
23
combined and adopted as a hybrid method (Zeng and Chini, 2017). Most of these
24
studies chose the process-based LCA with a cradle-to-grave system boundary, where
25
the life span consideration was ranging from 30 to 100 years (Table 1). In addition,
26
almost all ‘cradle-to-grave’ LCA studies only considered the end-of-life waste
27
management, except one that considered waste management at the construction stage
28
(Dahlstrøm et al., 2012). Waste management at the operational stage (e.g. for
29
renovation) was considered in two studies (Ghose et al., 2017; Rodrigues et al., 2018),
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despite these studies only focused on building retrofit.
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Due to the complex nature of buildings, LCA results are often sensitive to
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different issues and considerations. However, about one-third of the papers consider
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sensitivity or uncertainty analysis (Table 1). Because of the dynamic nature, some
34
studies pointed out several important aspects in their studies, including the change of 13
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT energy sources and waste management scenarios, use of different LCI databases for
2
different materials, and different LCIA methods (Ortiz-Rodríguez et al., 2010); the
3
choice of insulation materials, building lifespans and heat recovery systems (Dodoo et
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al., 2014); a change in electricity mix (Dahlstrøm et al., 2012); an improvement in
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structural and non-structural elements (Hoxha et al., 2017); the building materials’
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production, transportation and electricity used (Rashid and Yusoff, 2015); a change in
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the formwork systems, transportation of precast elements and adoption of biodiesel
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(Dong and Ng, 2015); a variation in recycling efficiency, marginal suppliers and
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potential change in electricity grid mix (Ghose et al., 2017), and so on.
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System boundary
Types of LCA
Study type
LCIA method
Principle building materials
Life time (years)
Residential Residential
M L
C-t-Gr C-t-Gr
P P
C C
-CML, CED
50, 100 50
Residential
L
C-t-Gr
P
C
CML
50
End-of-life
Bastos et al. (2014)
UK Spain and Colombia Sweden Portugal
Wood-framed Composite Brick and block frame
Waste management consideration Construction stage; End-of-life End-of-life
Residential Residential Residential
L L L
C-t-Gr C-t-Gr C-t-Gr
P P P
C C C
CML ---
50 50 75
Dahlstrøm et al. (2012)
Norway
Residential
L
C-t-Gr
P
C
Moon et al. (2014)
South Korea
Residential
H
C-t-Ga
Hy
C
Atmaca (2016a) Zhang and Wang (2016)
Turkey
Residential
M, H
C-t-Gr
P
C
China Belgium, Portugal, Sweden
Residential
H
C-t-Ga
P/I-O
C
Residential
L
C-t-S
P
C
USA
Commercial
M
C-t-Gr
Portugal
Residential
L
R
Sri Lanka
M
C-t-Gr
Australia and UK
Educational Commercial Residential
H
C-t-Ga
Vitale et al. (2018)
Italy
Residential
Hoxha et al. (2017) Lewandowska et al. (2015) Balasbaneh and Marsono (2017)
France
Residential
L
Poland
Residential
L
Malaysia
L
Wu et al. (2017)
China
Residential Residential Commercial
H, M, L
Rossi et al. (2012) Al-Ghamdi and Bilec (2017) Rodrigues et al. (2018) Kumanayake and Luo (2018) Sandanayake et al. (2018)
ReCiPe IPCC
IPCC
CML
P
C
TRACI
--
C
ReCiPe
P
C
--
P
C
C-t-Gr
P
C
-IMPACT 2002+
C-t-Gr
--
S
C-t-S
Hy
C
CML IMPACT 2002+
C-t-Gr
P
C
IPCC
C-t-Gr
--
S
Guo et al. (2017)
China
Residential
H, M, L
C-t-Gr
P
C
Kim et al. (2015)
South Korea
Educational
H
C-t-Gr
I-O
C
SC
Sweden Austria
Composite Wood Composite
--
15
Sensitivity analysis (10) × ×
Wood Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete
50
End-of-life End-of-life × Construction stage; End-of-life
×
×
×
50
×
×
Composite Steel framed; Masonry
×
×
×
50
×
×
Composite
60
End-of-life
×
50
Retrofit
50
End-of-life
×
×
M AN U
Passer et al. (2012) Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic (2012) Ortiz-Rodríguez et al. (2010) Dodoo et al. (2014)
Types of building
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Gustavsson et al. (2010)
Location
AC C
Study
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Level of building
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Table 1. General features of the selected studies.
Composite Concrete and Wood
(1) (2) (1) (3)
(4) × (4)
Composite
50
End-of-life
×
Multiple
50
End-of-life
(5)
Wood Block, Concrete, Steel, Wood
100
×
×
50
End-of-life
×
Composite Reinforced concrete; Wood
50
End-of-life
×
50
End-of-life
×
Composite
65
End-of-life
×
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
Residential South Korea Germany/ Austria
Educational
×
C-t-Ga
Hy
C
IPCC
Reinforced concrete
Residential
L, M
C-t-Gr
P
C
--
Wood buildings
UK
Residential
×
C-t-Gr
P
C
IPCC
Gan et al. (2017) Nadoushani and Akbarnezhad (2015)
Hong Kong
Composite
H
C-t-Ga
P
C
IPCC
USA
Commercial
L, H
C-t-Gr
P
C
--
Su and Zhang (2016) Heinonen et al. (2016)
China
Residential
M, H
C-t-Ga
Hy
C
IPCC
Finland
Residential
M
C-t-Ga
P
C
ReCiPe
Peng (2016)
China
H
C-t-Gr
×
C
Hong et al. (2015)
China
Office Office and Commercial
H
C-t-Ga
P
C
Dong and Ng (2015)
Hong Kong
Residential
H
C-t-Ga
P
C
Ghose et al. (2017)
New Zealand
Office
×
R
×
C
Roh and Tae (2017)
South Korea
Residential
H
C-t-Gr
P
C
IPCC
IPCC
ReCiPe CML/ILCD 2011
×
50
End-of-life
×
Composite Reinforced concrete Concrete; Steel framed
50
End-of-life
×
×
×
×
50
End-of-life
×
Steel framed
×
×
×
Concrete Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete
×
×
×
50
End-of-life
×
×
×
(6)
×
×
(7)
×
Renovation
(8)
SC ×
Composite 40 End-of-life × Reinforced Roh et al. (2017) South Korea Residential H C-t-Ga P C CML concrete × × × Kua and Wong Reinforced (2012) Singapore Commercial M C-t-Gr Hy C IPCC concrete 30 End-of-life (9) [H, High-rise; M, Mid-rise; L, Low-rise; P, Process-based; I-O, Input-Output; Hy, Hybrid; C, Case study; S, Survey; R, Refurbishment; C-t-Gr, Cradle-to- Grave; C-t-Ga, Cradle-to-Gate; C-t-S, Cradle-to-Site; (1) Change energy source and waste management scenario, use different LCI databases for different materials, and different LCIA methods; (2) Choice of insulation, building lifespan, heat recovery, etc.; (3) Change in electricity mix; (4) Monte Carlo simulation; (5) Structural and non-structural elements; (6) Building materials production, transportation and electricity use; (7) Formwork systems, transportation of precast elements, adoption of biodiesel; (8) Recycling efficiency, marginal suppliers, and potential change in electricity grid mix; (9) Waste management (during operation); (10) Change of materials quantity].
AC C
EP
TE D
--
×
RI PT
×
M AN U
Jang et al. (2015) Hafner and Schafer (2017) Moncaster and Symons (2013)
16
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4.2. Consideration of impacts categories Carbon emissions (including the embodied and life cycle) are the most common
3
environmental impact category selected in buildings’ LCA. In addition, half of the
4
studies measured energy consumption (embodied and life cycle) in their assessment.
5
Many of the selected case studies (about 40%) used a single impact indicator (carbon
6
emission or energy consumption) (Dodoo et al., 2014; Hafner et al., 2017; Roh and
7
Tae, 2017) or two impact categories (carbon and energy consumption) (Atmaca,
8
2016a; Wu et al., 2017). This is a very common feature in LCA studies (Anand and
9
Amor, 2017), as the selection of impact category is very open and subject to
10
individual preference. However, carbon emissions or energy consumption are
11
intensity indicators only unless they are objectively assessed. Critical consideration of
12
other impact indicators is essential when it comes to comprehensive assessment. This
13
is because some impacts categories are more intensive and critical in some
14
perspectives than these two. For example, particulate emissions and potential leaching
15
during construction and waste management can be vital considerations (Araújo et al.,
16
2014; Butera et al., 2014). However, the basis of selection of particular impact
17
categories is not often clearly stated in buildings’ LCA studies (Anand and Amor,
18
2017).
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SC
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2
Several aspects were identified by different studies on the choice of impact
20
categories (Chau et al., 2015). The most important ones are the lack of
21
standardization, as well as lack of data to support appropriate assessment of the
22
categories. In addition, the relevancy to a particular study and the support of a specific
23
category in a LCA tool or method, and an intentional avoidance of comprehensive
24
assessment by integrating multiple indicators may be other influential factors. These
25
may not only lead to the failure in accounting for certain impacts, but also the
26
ignorance of certain essential impact categories (Anand and Amor, 2017). For
27
example, water consumption (water depletion) can be an important consideration due
28
to the long life span of buildings. However, only few studies assessed water
29
consumption (Dahlstrøm et al., 2012), and another study included that during the
30
building construction stage (Dong and Ng, 2015). Only one third of the selected case
31
studies chose multiple impact categories in their assessment (Passer et al., 2012; Roh
32
et al., 2017) (Supplementary Information, S-Table 1).
AC C
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4.3. Comparison of LCA results The comparison of LCA results among different studies are still an unsolved issue
3
(Anand and Amor, 2017). Different studies identified and highlighted several factors,
4
including the type of buildings, raw materials of buildings, system boundaries, LCIA
5
methodologies, use of different energy measurement, types of LCI data, temporal and
6
spatial scale, completeness of the data, technology used of the manufacturing
7
processes, life span of buildings, etc. (Dixit, 2012). The comparison of LCA results is
8
important for benchmarking the existing practices, as well as setting up targets for
9
reducing environmental impacts for new construction. However, there is still no
10
consensus on the results comparison among various scientific studies (Anand and
11
Amor, 2017; Peng, 2016).
SC
RI PT
2
As this could hinder results comparison in building’s LCA, the authors have
13
attempted to make such comparison based on some predefined criteria shown in Table
14
2 (and Supplementary Information S-Table 2), i.e. by selecting the two impact
15
categories (carbon emissions and energy consumption) from the selected 36 literature.
16
Although the consideration of functional unit and lifespan of the buildings can be
17
harmonized, still the comparison is problematic due to different considerations at
18
different life cycle stages of buildings among the studies (Table 2). Despite several
19
studies had considered ‘cradle-to-grave’ system boundary, some of them did not
20
consider the renovation impacts (Guo et al., 2017; Roh and Tae, 2017). Most
21
importantly, waste management scenarios during the construction and renovation
22
stages were not taken into account in many studies (Table 2).
25
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24
4.3.1. Carbon emissions
AC C
23
M AN U
12
To make effective comparison, this study categorized the results by several ways.
26
First, the comparison was based on residential and non-residential (e.g. commercial,
27
educational and office) buildings with a ‘cradle-to-grave’ system boundary and a 50
28
years’ lifespan. The buildings are mostly constructed with reinforced concrete,
29
concrete and steel structures. Then, we compared residential buildings where wood
30
was the principal building materials with a 50 years’ lifespan and a ‘cradle-to-grave’
31
system boundary. Finally, all buildings (including residential and non-residential),
32
where a ‘cradle-to-gate’ system boundary were considered (Fig. 7). For residential
33
buildings, the variation in carbon emissions is quite high in different studies, ranging
18
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT from 1,780 kg CO2 eq/m2 to 11,900 kg CO2 eq/m2 (Fig. 7A). Similarly, a high
2
variation was observed for non-residential buildings (ranging from 2,500 kg CO2
3
eq/m2 to 11,985 kg CO2 eq/m2) (Fig. 7B). The variation of wood constructed
4
residential buildings was very high too, ranging from 207 kg CO2 eq/m2 to 6,276 kg
5
CO2 eq/m2 (Fig. 7C). This variation was mainly due to the height of buildings,
6
transportation of materials, energy sources, selected LCI data, and consideration of
7
different processes at different stages of buildings. However, when a ‘cradle-to-gate’
8
system boundary was considered, the variation was quite low compared to the cradle-
9
to-grave system boundary (Fig. 7D), as the carbon emissions are ranging from 406 kg
10
CO2 eq/m2 to 1,022 kg CO2 eq/m2. This is may be due to a lower complexity
11
associated with the life span, except the types of materials used, transport and
12
technology for construction used in the studies.
SC
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1
The comparison of all of the selected 36 studies is not possible due to different
14
system boundary, functional unit, life span and other considerations. For example,
15
Gustavsson et al. (2010) conducted life cycle carbon emission of wood-framed
16
apartment building (mainly used wood-based building materials) in Sweden with the
17
focus of bioenergy recovery from wood residues and production of secondary wood-
18
based products from the recovered wood materials generated for the production of
19
building materials, building construction, renovation and demolition. The study also
20
considered the carbon balance for the bioenergy recovery from the wood residue
21
derived from the production and demolition of building with the lifespan of 50 and
22
100 years, and found the carbon emission of -62 and 251 kg CO2 eq/m2 for 50 years
23
and 100 years, respectively due to the consideration of avoided emission of fossil
24
energy that substituted by bioenergy.
TE D
EP
AC C
25
M AN U
13
It can also be seen from Fig. 2 that waste management at construction and
26
renovation stages was not considered in most of the studies, whereas some of them
27
considered waste management at the end-of-life of building. However, waste
28
treatment and materials recovery at every stage of building have to be considered
29
critically for adopting the CE principle into building, as well as for the enhancing the
30
accuracy of the assessment.
31 32
19
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Table 2. Carbon emission (kg CO2 eq) of buildings by the selected studies.
Guo et al. (2017) Guo et al. (2017) Kim et al. (2015) Jang et al. (2015) Hafner and Schafer (2017) Moncaster and Symons (2013) Gan et al. (2017) Nadoushani and Akbarnezhad (2015) Su and Zhang (2016) Heinonen et al. (2016) Peng (2016)
(-)62-251 2550-3250 3391 2512 -18 1657 455-536 416-461 5,809 34-38 6421-7725 571-964 1176 523.6 (Cr) 508.8 (T) 1780-2060 450-1900 -11900 (Cr), 2040 (T) 2660-4108 (R), 3371-11,985 (C)
18
6815.4-7242.9 (Rc)
RI PT
End-of-life stage Waste Demolition management √ √ √ √ 42 -109 25 × --× × √ √ × × × × 0.0197 × × × × √ × × 8 2 × × × × √ √ √ √ × × √ √ √ √
SC
M AN U
TE D
Gustavsson et al. (2010) Passer et al. (2012) Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic (2012) Ortiz-Rodríguez et al. (2010) Dodoo et al. (2014) Bastos et al. (2014) Dahlstrøm et al. (2012) Moon et al. (2014) Zhang and Wang (2016) Atmaca (2016a) Rossi et al. (2012) Al-Ghamdi and Bilec (2017) Rodrigues et al. (2018) Kumanayake and Luo (2018) Sandanayake et al. (2018) Sandanayake et al. (2018) Vitale et al. (2018) Hoxha et al. (2017) Lewandowska et al. (2015) Balasbaneh and Marsono (2017) Wu et al. (2017)
Construction stage Operational stage Raw Construction Waste Waste FU materials stage management Use Renovation management m2 √ √ √ √ × × m2 √ √ × √ √ × 362 × 3097 × m2 m2 192 × 2250 45 × -------m2.y √ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ √ √ √ × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 582 × 5227 × × m2.y √ × × √ × × m2 96-106 × 6325-7619 √ × m2 × × × × 571-964 m2 495 19 614 38 m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ × √ √ × -√ × × √ × × m2 √ √ × √ √ m2 √ √ × √ √ 6532.1265.3-308.2 × 6916.70 × × m2 5967.9m2 (-97.4 to -84) × 6314.1 × × -√ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ × × √ × m2 √ × × × × × m2 √ √ × √ × × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ √ × × × m2 √ √ × √ × ×
EP
Study
AC C
1 2
20
45.6-52.3 √ × √ × × √ × × √
√ × √ √ × √ × × √
Total
5922.8-6275.7 (T) -767 77-207 -497 2500 1022 406 5077
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
√ √ × 476.58
√ √ × 21.32 477
√
√
× × × × × ×
× × × 1448.35 × √
× ×
× × 88.5- 123.4
× × √
× × ×
× × ×
× × ×
25.17
× √
× √
757 637 88.5- 123.4 1971.42 477 3249
EP
TE D
M AN U
SC
[FU, Functional unit; R, Residential buildings; C, Commercial buildings; Cr, Concrete building; T, Timber framed building; Rc, Reinforced concrete buildings]
AC C
1
m2 m2 m2.y m2 m2 m2
RI PT
Hong et al. (2015) Dong and Ng (2015) Ghose et al. (2017) Roh and Tae (2017) Roh et al. (2017) Kua and Wong (2012)
21
1 2
Fig. 7. Carbon emission of buildings in the selected LCA studies.
3 4
M AN U
SC
RI PT
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
4.3.2. Energy consumption
Compared to carbon emissions, the assessment of energy consumption is more
6
complex, and thus, more than a half of the studies did not consider this in their
7
assessment, due to different considerations (e.g. life time), sources of energy, selected
8
LCI, energy consumption drivers, building envelope and other designs, different
9
stages of consumption, etc. (Supplementary Information S-Table 2).
TE D
5
A comparison of the LCA results of energy consumption for residential buildings
11
is shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that the variation of energy consumption is quite
12
high among the studies, even with the same lifespan (e.g. 50 years) and system
13
boundary (e.g. cradle-to-grave) considerations. For example, it was ranging from 28
14
GJ/m2 to 61 GJ/m2 for the whole life cycle of buildings. However, the upper value is
15
still lower for residential buildings (e.g. 61 GJ/m2) than the commercial buildings (62
16
GJ/m2) (Wu et al., 2017). In addition, no significant variation was observed for the
17
selection of principal building materials (Fig. 8).
AC C
EP
10
18
22
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SC
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1
3
Fig. 8. Energy consumption of residential buildings in the selected LCA studies.
4 5 6
M AN U
2
5. Overview of the reviewed papers
Several reviews regarding the carbon footprint, embodied energy, and environmental
8
impacts were conducted in this field of research, especially on residential buildings. Due
9
to the increasing scientific attention in building / construction, number of contributions of
10
LCA research has been increasing, including the case study, survey and review papers.
11
Reviews are particularly important for finding out the existing research trends, scientific
12
interests / hotspot, research gaps and future direction, as well as the reflections of a
13
particular research field.
EP
TE D
7
In this study, 19 reviews were selected which were directly related to buildings’ LCA
15
for summarizing their study focus and findings (Table 3). Each review study focused on
16
analyzing some specific directions of the study. Some of them emphasized on the
17
embodied carbon of buildings and residential buildings, life cycle carbon and energy of
18
buildings and residential buildings, and embodied energy of buildings. Some of them
19
were devoted to the environmental evaluation of buildings. In addition, few studies
20
particularly discussed the environmental evaluation of building refurbishment, and
21
carbon footprint of refurbishment and new buildings, dynamic LCA in buildings, BIM-
22
based LCA applications, LCA tools in building assessment, bibliometric analysis of
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23
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
1
building LCA study, and environmental and cost impacts of green building development.
2
In addition, a recent study analyzed the carbon emissions of prefabricated buildings
3
(Teng et al., 2018). The implications of these reviews are highlighted in Table 3, where contributions of
5
the existing literature were summarized to pointing out the existing gaps and
6
recommendations for further research. In most of the studies, waste management at
7
different stages of buildings was not critically considered due to the assumption of lesser
8
contributions to the total impacts. However, critical assessment of waste generation and
9
management at different stages of buildings are important together with the selection of
10
building materials at the early design stage for adopting the CE principle to the building
11
industry, as the industry is now shifting from a linear to circular paradigm with the aim of
12
achieving / enhancing the sustainability performance of the industry.
13 14 15
Table 3. Overview of the literature review regarding LCA of buildings. Location Hong Kong
Dixit (2017) USA
Analyzed embodied energy in residential buildings
Analyzed embodied carbon in buildings
EP
UK
AC C
Pomponi and Moncaster (2018)
Study focus Life cycle energy and carbon emission of building construction
Highlights • Findings, as well as limitations from previous LCA studies were discussed as decision support tools for sustainable building design. • Major discrepancies were concluded due to different compositions of fuel mixes, functional unit, data inventory and practices, boundary scoping and methodology choice. • Waste management during construction and renovation was not considered. • Significant variation of embodied energy among studies was found due to choose of system boundary, energy input, sources of energy, method of calculation, sources of data, data completeness and representativeness, etc. • The study suggested to develop probability distribution of uncertainties of methodological and data quality parameters associated with the assessment. • Mainly focused on the structural materials during production phase. • Waste management during construction and renovation was not considered. • Suggested to assess the embodied carbon during design stage of buildings for early decision support. • Remarkable variability was concluded due to data variability that can lead to a 284-1044% variation of embodied carbon coefficient. • A total 95 case studies were analyzed consisted of conventional, passive, low energy and nearly zero energy residential buildings. • The sharing of embodied carbon was ranges from 9% to 80% to the total impact. • High variation of results were observed due to differences in the energy mix, LCI data or overall building design. Thus, the study suggests normalization and standardization in LCA of residential buildings.
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Study Chau et al. (2015)
M AN U
SC
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4
Chastas et al. (2018)
Greece
Reviewed embodied carbon emissions of residential buildings
Vilches et al. (2017)
Spain
Summarized and analyzed the environmental evaluation of building refurbishment
• Most LCA studies have mainly focused on the evaluation of the building before and after energy retrofitting. • The renovation in walls and roofs system, preplacing windows, improving the efficiency of air conditioning, and installing PV panels were the most retrofit measures. • The study identified the energy required for using new materials (embodied and disposal) between 10 and 60% of the total energy. • The study recommended to evaluate the environmental, economic and social
24
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
China
Framework for dynamic LCA in buildings
De Wolf et al. (2017)
UK
Analyzed embodied carbon emission and mitigation in buildings
Zeng and Chini (2017)
USA
Tam et al. (2018)
Australia
Analyzed embodied energy of buildings LCA tools in buildings
Cabeza et al. (2014)
Spain
Islam et al. (2015)
Australia
RI PT
Su et al. (2017)
SC
BIM-based LCA to buildings
M AN U
Spain
TE D
Soust-Verdaguer et al. (2017)
consequences resulting from the extension of the life cycle of buildings. • BIM can contribute to simplify data input, and optimize results during the LCA application in buildings during early stages of design. • Most of the case studies utilized BIM models during LCI stage. • The data contained in BIM databases are not enough to develop the LCA application itself. • Difficult to include several life cycle stages into BIM-based LCA assessment. • The study recommended future development with improve and standardize BIM integration into LCA for comprehensive assessment. • Identified a new framework consisted of four dynamic building properties, including technological progress, variation in occupancy behavior, dynamic characteristic factors, and dynamic weighting factors. • Examples of such dynamic issues were: dynamic material and energy consumption in maintenance stage; dynamic recovery and renewable rate, dynamic energy mix, etc. that can affect the whole building’s life cycle. • The study suggested further case-specific study using the dynamic framework. • The study reviewed academic and professional literature, as well as survey using focus groups and interviews with industry experts to reduce embodied carbon emission from buildings. • The study suggested to improve data quality, and develop a transparent and simplified methodology for assessment. • Establishing emission (or impacts) benchmark is important, otherwise it is difficult to use from a wide variety of results. • Industry collaboration would be helpful in accuracy of the assessment. • Bibliometrically analyzed the researches on embodied energy of buildings. • Highlights important keywords, citation hotspots, shifting patterns of interest, trending interests, and major research topics in this research field. • Evaluated the appropriateness of LCA tools (e.g., software) for building's LCA along with achieving Green Star's requirements in reducing GHG emissions during the lifetime of a building. • Both SimaPro and GaBi LCA software can be used in building LCA study along with other tools for better geographical representation or building itself. • Localized or regionalized tool and databases for assessment was encouraged. • Most studies have focused on exemplary buildings instead of traditional buildings. • Similarly, most studies have focused on assessment in urban areas, and not well documented literature were found for rural areas. • Studies were mostly focused on Europe and North America. • Only a few life cycle costing paper was available. • The relationship between the impact categories and life stages is complex. • About 88% of the total life cycle cost was directly related to the construction and maintenance. • Comprehensive evaluation of environmental and cost impacts should be assessed in future based on stakeholders’ demand. • Significant variation was observed due to wide range of choices and assumptions made in different studies. • Dynamic LCA in buildings can be adopted, but uncertainties regarding dynamics should be addressed. • LCA can be integrated and used in building certification systems, but again verification of such integration is necessary for avoiding high uncertainty from building certification. • Application of LCA is limited in the building industry due to the lack of integration of building related design tools, and thus suggested to make it more useful in the industry. • The study argued the industry involvement or collaboration is necessary for methodology/ database development, integration in practices and environmental friendly decision making. • The results of environmental and economic assessment should go to the construction industry, although the uptake of such results by the industry is
AC C
EP
Life cycle energy and cost analysis in buildings
Life cycle impacts and cost analysis in residential buildings
Anand and Amor (2017)
Canada
Focused on embodied energy and integration of LCA in building certifications
Zuo et al. (2017)
Australia
Analyzed environmental
25
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
Geng et al. (2017)
China
Bibliometric analysis of building LCA research
Soares et al. (2017)
Portugal
Energy and environmental performance of buildings
Schwartz et al. (2018)
UK
Analyzed carbon footprint of refurbished and new buildings
Teng et al. (2018)
Hong Kong
3 4
EP
2
Synthesized the options for reducing carbon emission through prefabrication
AC C
1
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Highlighted the sustainable refurbishment options for residential buildings
SC
Hong Kong
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rather slow. Thus, simplified methods for assessment are suggested. • The study also highlighted the need for relevant LCI database, especially for regional/country specific. • The study suggests standardization in buildings LCA in terms of method used. • Only a few study has focused on LCA of sustainable refurbishment strategies. • Most of the studies have focused on studies of single refurbishment methods, such as insulation, shading and photovoltaic panels, while refurbishment of lighting, air-conditioning and other building service equipment were often neglected. • From the review, the study identified 88 sustainable refurbishment solutions under the three broad categories, such as building service, building envelope and renewable energy. • According to climate and building condition, the study identified 39 relevant sustainable refurbishment solutions for residential buildings in Hong Kong. • Evaluated and quantified the patterns of publications addressing building LCA research characteristics such as authorships, citations, and impact factor. • Temporal and spatial retrieval of publications related to building LCA research. • Identified hotspots in the building LCA research. • Top five topics were highlighted related to building LCA research, such as energy, material, carbon, sustainability and technology. • Potential strategies for improving the energy and environmental performance of buildings are delineated based on multidisciplinary approaches, including the model of unpredictable data, linkage to urban scale assessment, energy behaviors and technological solutions, indoor environmental performance into building LCA, methodologies for retrofits strategies, phase change materialsbased systems in design and retrofitting strategies, renewable energy sources, optimized design, end-use behavior, etc. • Most refurbishments had lower life cycle carbon footprint than most new buildings. • However, preference was not concluded based on the current evidence and methodologies, and suggested for methodology development. • Further research was suggested to unify the protocol development for building life cycle carbon footprint analysis. • Analyzed the evidence for reducing carbon emission of buildings through prefabrication. • A total 27 case studies of prefabricated buildings were examined. • The study pointed out that about 3.2% of operational carbon reductions were achieved for prefabrication. • Further research was suggested on full life cycle of the buildings, nonresidential and steel-structured prefabricated buildings, benchmarking, etc.
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and cost impacts of green building development
6. Adoption of circular economy principle in buildings It is evidence from this review that significant environmental impacts related to direct
5
waste generation for construction, refurbishments and demolition of the buildings that
6
have particularly been given less attention. In addition, ineffective use of non-renewable
7
materials could significantly cause natural resources depletion. For example, about 15%
8
of the total construction materials have gone to landfill annually due to over-ordering,
9
ordering incorrectly or damage due to poor storage (Barker, 2008). The reuse of such
10
materials as feedstock for other productions can reduce the waste disposal problem and 26
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the primary resource extraction, not to mention about the energy consumption and other
2
emissions arising from the secondary production (Martin et al., 2015). When there are resources scarcity and shortage in supply, industrial symbiosis plays a
4
significant role to lower the environmental impact and promote green economic growth ˗
5
i.e. the system can help link industrial development and carbon reduction (Pauliuk et al.,
6
2017). Therefore, resource productivity will be the key focus in the construction industry
7
in the near future. In this relation, CE can keep adding values in products for longer time
8
and virtually eliminate wastes (Smol et al., 2015). CE emphases on environmental
9
sustainability by transforming products by developing workable relationships between
10
ecological systems and economic growth (Nasir et al., 2017). However, several changes
11
are required throughout the value chains, from product design to new business and
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market models, and from new ways of turning waste into a resource, as well as to new
13
modes of consumer behavior for transition to a CE (Smol et al., 2015).
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Developing guidelines for CE implementation and choosing CE indicators are still in
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early stages and unclear. Therefore, Pauliuk (2018) proposed CE indicators shall be based
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on LCA, material flow analysis (MFA) and material flow cost accounting. Another
17
theoretical framework being proposed is to discuss how industrial symbiosis with CE
18
could pursue sustainability by identifying the main collaboration aspects and performance
19
impacts (Herczeg et al., 2018). Meanwhile, a framework to integrate CE and eco-
20
innovations was proposed by de Jesus et al. (2018), and an empirically-based,
21
collaboration tool was proposed to enhance collaboration for CE in the building sector by
22
Leising et al. (2018).
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Few case-specific studies were also conducted in different sectors. For example,
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Genovese et al. (2017) conducted a comparative case study on biodiesel production from
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virgin and waste cooking oil using a linear and circular supply chain, and the study
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showed that environmental gains was about 40% in terms of carbon emissions for the
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latter approach.
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The traditional 3R concept (e.g., Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) follows ‘cradle-to-
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grave’ approach, but the post-use stage and the existence of multiple generations was not
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engaged, whereas the 6R concept (e.g., Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recovery,
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Remanufacturing, and Redesign) follows ‘cradle-to-cradle (C2C)’ approach that 27
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established multi-generational, continuous and closed-loop system (Bradley et al., 2018;
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Jawahir and Bradley, 2016). Dieterle et al. (2018) also highlighted that the cradle-to-
3
grave approach with the credits for substituted materials, is not fully suitable for
4
meaningful interpretation for CE setting. The study recognized that CE requires closing
5
material cycles, upcycling rather than downcycling, and increase responsibility of
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producers. The study also suggests that C2C LCA approach should be better aligned with
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CE settings. However, several challenges such as life cycle cost and implementation of
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new business model for adopting C2C as decision support are needed to address. To
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support, Niero and Olsen (2016) pointed out that close-loop system of aluminum can
10
recycle has lower climate change impacts over the other recycling scenarios. In contrast,
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the use of mixed waste glass (post-consumed) as alternative cementitious materials in an
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open-loop circular approach can reduce the overall environmental impact in concrete
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production significantly (Deschamps et al., 2018).
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However, the feasibility of close-loop economy is still unknown. Therefore, the
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experts argued that LCA and life cycle costing should be used to evaluate the options for
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CE solutions in order to ensure the benefits in new product designs and increasing
17
recycling (Haupt and Zschokke, 2017). However, the loss of materials quantity/ quality
18
for their different uses can hindrance the adoption of LCA in CE principle. One of the
19
potential solution may be the use of substitution ratio when the recycling materials used
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in further processes based on their loss of quantity or quality. In addition, the risk of
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potential contamination of secondary materials should be modelled when adopting CE
22
principle (Haupt and Zschokke, 2017).
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For the purpose of supplying alternative materials from the secondary resources,
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recycle rate can be a good performance indicator for CE settings, as recycling rate (for
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both open and closed-loop recycling systems) can provide useful information in
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quantifying the circulated materials (Haupt et al., 2017).
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Elia et al. (2017) proposed a four-step framework for supporting assessment in CE
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setting, including identify (i) the processes to monitor, (ii) the activities to implement,
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(iii) the requirements to measure (with the focus of single or multiple requirements such
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as reducing input and use of natural resources, increasing share of renewable and
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recyclable resources, reducing valuable materials losses, and reducing emission), and (iv) 28
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the possible level of application, based on suitable methodology including material flow,
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energy flow, land-use, or LCA. Another conceptual framework was proposed for resource recovery from waste
4
within CE setting by Iacovidou et al. (2017) that includes (i) material flow analysis and
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conceptual value assessment, (ii) metrics selection, (iii) scenario development, (iv)
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complex value assessment, evaluation and reflection, (v) detailed analysis and
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refinement, and (vi) final evaluation, and the assessment can be done using the input-
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output analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis and LCA.
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CE adoption in the construction industry is still in infancy stage, although a few
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frameworks and guidelines were proposed by some studies. For example, Smol et al.
11
(2015) reviewed the possible use of sewage sludge ash for the production of building
12
materials like cement, brick, ceramics, aggregates production, etc. in the light of adopting
13
CE concept in the construction industry. Pomponi and Moncaster (2017) reviewed the
14
adoption of CE in the built environment and suggested to apply the LCA and MFA tools
15
for implementation of CE. The study also proposed a six dimensional framework for
16
adopting the CE concept in building research, including environmental, societal,
17
economical, technological, behavioral and governmental aspects. Nasir et al. (2017)
18
compared the environmental impacts of two different types of building insulation
19
materials in the UK by integrating the circular supply chain. The results demonstrated
20
that insulation materials produced within a circular supply chain exhibited lower carbon
21
emissions compared to that following a linear supply chain. Adams et al. (2017)
22
conducted an online survey in the UK to establish the construction industry’s level of
23
awareness of CE, and pointed out several challenges, including a lack of incentive to
24
design for end-of-life issues for construction products, lack of market mechanisms, low
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value of recovered products, unclear financial case, fragmented supply chain, lack of
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interest, awareness and knowledge, lack of consideration for end-of-life during design
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and complexity of building.
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Moreover, Ghisellini et al. (2018) conducted a comprehensive review to examine
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whether the adoption of CE is environmentally and economically sustainable by focusing
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on construction and demolition sectors. The study mainly used LCA related papers in this
31
assessment, and found out several barriers of implementing CE in this sectors. The status, 29
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quantity and quality of building materials have to be known for effective implementation
2
of CE in buildings. Hence, a BIM based (early) design can help identify the materials
3
flow during the different stages of buildings (Akanbi et al., 2018), and LCA model
4
should be enhanced and included all processes from the CtC system boundary (Ghisellini
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et al., 2018; Russell-Smith et al., 2015, Russell-Smith and Lepech, 2015), for adopting
6
the CE principle in buildings.
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7. Discussion
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The aim of this study was to identify the research scope of buildings’ LCA by
11
critically reviewing relevant literature. In addition to identify the knowledge gaps for
12
comprehensive assessment of buildings, the adoption of CE concept was highlighted.
13
Due to a wide variety of choices in selecting system boundary and other assumptions, the
14
LCA results may also significantly vary, and thus, building typology, scope of
15
assessment, system boundary and others assumptions should be mentioned when
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comparing the outcomes of different studies (Islam et al., 2015). This study considered
17
the important aspects when critically analyzing the selected case study papers (as shown
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in Table 2).
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It has already been mentioned that buildings’ LCA results could vary significantly
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among different studies due to the types of buildings, lifespan, system boundary,
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principal raw materials, etc. By considering the same system boundary (e.g. cradle-to-
22
grave), life time, building materials and functional unit, the average carbon emissions of
23
residential buildings was 4,306 kg CO2 eq/m2, which was significantly lower (about 30%)
24
than that of non-residential buildings (6,180 kg CO2 eq/m2) with the same assumptions,
25
although the current research is mostly focusing on residential buildings. In comparison
26
to residential buildings constructed with concrete / reinforced concrete, about 25% lower
27
carbon emission was observed for residential buildings constructed with wood (Fig. 7).
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The results also varied significantly for buildings when compared to a cradle-to-gate
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system boundary (average 588 kg CO2 eq/m2). This is because of the collection of a huge
30
and variety of data to model a comprehensive assessment is not only time consuming, but
31
often difficult. However, several studies had also attempted to assess the carbon emission 30
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of whole building by considering different stages, but they still excluded the renovation
2
and end-of-life waste treatment (Peng, 2016). Recent reviews also concluded that the
3
operation and end-of-life stages have been overlooked in many LCA studies related to
4
building assessment (Anand and Amor, 2017; De Wolf et al., 2017). The typology of buildings may vary widely from region to region, due to the
6
availability of raw materials, climate, tradition and so on. The key variables are building
7
envelope (i.e. floor, wall and roof assemblages), building height (low-rise to high-rise),
8
lifespan, etc. (Islam et al., 2015), and thus, the LCA results can exhibit a significant
9
variation. The results may even be very different in the same regions due to different
10
considerations. For example, about a difference of 22% in carbon emissions was found
11
between two studies conducted by Gan et al. (2017) and Dong and Ng (2015) for
12
reinforced concrete high-rise buildings in Hong Kong due to the choice of different
13
upstream database (Ecoinvent and USLCI, and secondary sources, respectively). Even
14
with the same system boundary, LCA results could vary among different studies too. For
15
instance, 497-637 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Hong Kong (Gan et al., 2017; Dong and Ng, 2015),
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757-1,022 kg CO2 eq/m2 in China (Hong et al., 2015; Su and Zhang, 2016), 477 kg CO2
17
eq/m2 in South Korea (Roh et al., 2017), 509-524 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Australia and UK
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(Sandanayake et al., 2018a,b), when a cradle-to-gate system boundary was considered.
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In addition, the environmental impacts of buildings can vary significantly among the
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studies depending on the regions or countries (Cabeza et al., 2014; De Wolf et al., 2017).
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Therefore, developing the local or regional benchmarks is essential for setting up future
22
mitigation goals to compare past and present performance, industry average or best
23
practice (Peng, 2016).
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LCI data quality in LCA studies on buildings is also a great concern. Because the
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quality of LCI data may affect the accuracy and validity of studies. Therefore, Europe,
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USA, and Australia are striving for local / regional LCI database development (Islam et
27
al., 2015). In recent years, China is also devoting some though insignificant efforts in LCI
28
database development. However, the verification and validation of such data are
29
necessary to ensure data quality (Anand and Amor, 2017). The LCI data availability can
30
greatly influence the results of LCA study (Dixit, 2017). Data availability during different
31
stages of life cycle of buildings may hinder the performance of a full LCA. This is 31
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because buildings are more complicated than a single product with comparatively long
2
life and multiple functions, and would often undergo to various changes (Chau et al.,
3
2015). In addition, the lack of benchmarks would make it difficult to adopt a mandatory
4
LCA assessment for buildings by various stakeholders. Moreover, many studies were
5
only related to the assessment of one or two impact indicators, mostly carbon and energy
6
assessment. It is difficult to make a trade off with one or two impact indicators for such a
7
complex system. Carbon emissions act as a relatively good indicator for building
8
assessment, but the majority of different impacts should be assessed with high coverage
9
of LCI. Data representativeness is another key issue affecting quality of building
10
assessment (Dixit, 2017), especially due to the lack temporal representation and outdated
11
data. For example, Ecoinvent database, USLCI and other secondary sources were used
12
for upstream processes in most of the building assessment in Hong Kong (Gan et al.,
13
2017; Dong and Ng, 2015), which could seriously affect the quality of results, and thus
14
demands further research using local data. In addition, many materials (e.g. non-
15
structural materials) and building systems (e.g. construction process, refurbishment
16
process, etc.) are often excluded from buildings’ LCA, which are in fact of significant
17
contributes in many impact categories (Heinonen et al., 2016).
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Most of the studies excluded waste management during the construction and
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renovation stages (Table 2) even some had selected a cradle-to-grave system boundary
20
(e.g. Guo et al., 2017; Hoxha et al., 2017). Some studies completely skipped waste
21
management in their studies (Lewandowska et al., 2015; Atmaca, 2016a). Only few
22
studies considered waste management during the construction stage, for example,
23
Dahlstrøm et al. (2012), but did not consider during the operational stage (e.g.,
24
renovation). Only a few studies thought about the impact assessment for refurbishments
25
and thus considered waste management for this only (e.g. Ghose et al., 2017; Rodrigues
26
et al., 2018). However, as building construction is now shifting from a linear to circular
27
paradigm, the consideration of those factors are essential for ensuring waste reduction,
28
resources recovery and resource-efficient construction, not to mention about increasing
29
the accuracy of such assessment, as well as for adopting the CE principle in the building
30
industry.
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Sustainability assessment cannot be fully evaluated without considering the economic
2
and social aspects, and most of the studies did not take those aspects into account (Chau
3
et al., 2015), and thus the adoption of CE principle in buildings would be the way
4
forward for comprehensive assessment, as environmental, social, economic, business and
5
policy aspects were already integrated with the proposed CE framework as demonstrated
6
in some studies (Nasir et al., 2017Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017;).
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CE is a relatively new model that promotes the maximum reuse / recycling of
8
materials and components in order to reduce waste generation to the largest possible
9
extent (Ghisellini et al., 2018). However, several challenges pertinent to the CE concept
10
towards environmental sustainability, including the definition of CE system boundaries,
11
challenges in the governance and management, inter-organizational and inter-sectoral
12
material and energy flows, etc. (Korhonen et al., 2018). In addition, several value chains
13
including manufacturing, distribution, sales and system changes are rarely involved in CE
14
currently (Kalmykova et al., 2017). CE also necessitates a systemic shift due to the
15
different concepts and understanding by integrating the economic prosperity and
16
environmental quality and its impacts on social equity and future generations (Kirchherr
17
et al., 2017). More scientific research on assessing the actual environmental impacts of
18
CE are suggested for effective implementation of the CE concept to various sectors, as
19
CE can influence sustainability, business model and innovation systems (Geissdoerfer et
20
al., 2017; Korhonen et al., 2018; Manninen et al., 2018). CE in the building sectors
21
should be adopted by considering the above-mentioned shortcomings and challenges in
22
order to appropriately selecting the system boundary and assessment tools during the
23
early stages of design, as the decisions at this stage can influence the overall
24
environmental performance of buildings significantly (Gervásio et al., 2014).
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Based on the above analysis, several major areas on further research related to
26
building LCA and CE adoption in buildings are highlighted. First, a comprehensive
27
assessment of buildings by including cradle-to-grave / C2C system boundary is scarce,
28
and thus, should be considered in future assessment with a special focus on the LCI data
29
quality (local / regional or case specific LCI data is preferred for more accurate
30
assessment). In addition, the assessment should include multiple impact categories, as
31
currently only about 60% of the studies were based on single impact. Second, material 33
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wastage during construction and waste generation during renovation and the end-of-life
2
of building should be critically considered in future studies, as currently about 69% of the
3
studies failed to consider waste management and recovery in their assessment, despite
4
27% of the studies took into account the end-of-life waste treatment. Third, a
5
comprehensive assessment by including non-structural materials (rather than the principal
6
materials only) is scarce, and hence, more attention on that should be put in place as some
7
studies highlighted that non-structural materials can significantly mislead the overall
8
results, especially in some of the indicators. Finally, it is found that studies regarding CE
9
adoption in building LCA is sparse and at the early stage of development. In addition to
10
the methodological rigor, case studies with effective implementation of CE concept are
11
recommended. Both open and close-looped recycling systems should be adopted using
12
recycling rate as the performance indicator to promote greater adoption of CE in the
13
building sector. For example, concrete waste can be in the line with the close-looped
14
recycling system, whereas steel, glass, wood, etc. can be analogous to the open-looped
15
upcycling system. In addition, the environmental and economic impacts of resource
16
recovery and upcycling can be assessed using LCA (C2C approach) based on MFA. In
17
the assessment, substitution ratio can be used for the close-looped system, whereas
18
replacement co-efficient (by considering the quality and market availability of the
19
materials) can be adopted for the open-looped system. More importantly, the challenges
20
identified by various mentioned studies should point to an effective implementation of
21
the CE principle in building. The extensive review of this study regarding the building
22
LCA shows that most of the studies have not considered materials flow and waste
23
treatment (recycling and disposal) critically at different stages of building, and thus, it is
24
suggested to take resource recovery into account when performing building LCA under
25
the CE context. This will help increase the accuracy of the assessment through the
26
identification of the potential in resource recovery, and ultimately save valuable natural
27
resources.
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Based on the findings of this study, different considerations and existing practices
29
associated with the selected case study papers (Tables 1-2) and implications of the
30
selected review papers (Table 3), a framework for further enhancement of buildings
34
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sustainability by extending the scope of research and adoption of the CE principle is
2
developed as shown in Fig. 9.
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Fig. 9. Framework further enhancement of buildings’ LCA research integrated with CE adoption.
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8. Conclusions Buildings are considered as a complex system, and hence, careful selection of
3
different considerations and assumptions in terms of different stages of buildings,
4
methodology and LCI data, other aspects beyond LCA is necessary for the
5
comprehensiveness of assessment. Based on this review, several conclusions can be
6
drawn and recommendations can be provided accordingly.
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About 40% of the studies used single impact indicator (and only one-third of the
8
studies used multiple indicators) as the selection of impact category is very open and is
9
subject to individual preference or perhaps due to lack of detailed data for comprehensive
10
assessment. Only 45% of the studies took a cradle-to-grave system boundary into their
11
assessment. This may be due to the limited data for building operation, use and
12
renovation, and the end-of-life. Therefore, other aspects beyond carbon and energy
13
consumption should be assessed according to a cradle-to-grave / cradle-to-cradle system
14
boundary in future studies to improve the comprehensiveness.
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More than 60% of the existing LCA studies focused on residential buildings.
16
However, the average carbon emissions of residential buildings was 4,306 kg CO2 eq/m2
17
which about 30% lower than that of non-residential buildings (6,180 kg CO2 eq/m2)
18
under the same considerations. Therefore, future studies should be directed to non-
19
residential buildings.
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Environmental impacts significantly vary depending upon the regions or countries.
21
For example, 497-637 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Hong Kong, 757-1,022 kg CO2 eq/m2 in China,
22
509-524 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Australia and UK based on a cradle-to-gate system boundary,
23
and thus, developing local or regional benchmarks is essential for comparing the
24
performance. In addition, the selection of upstream database may significantly mislead
25
the results of assessment. For example, a difference of about 22% was found due to the
26
selection of different databases in those Hong Kong case studies. Therefore, local /
27
regional LCI should be preferentially developed and used in the assessment.
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About 69% of the studies did not consider waste management at all, while 1%, 3%
29
and 27% studies considered wastage only at the construction, renovation (focusing on
30
building renovation only), and the end-of-life stages of buildings, respectively. As
31
buildings are now shifting from a linear to circular paradigm, resource recovery and 36
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resource-efficient construction within the CE concept should be practiced in the building
2
industry for comprehensive assessment and to enhance the sustainability performance. In addition, very few (and partly) CE related building (including construction) LCA
4
studies are found at present. However, some fundamental studies focusing on the scope,
5
indicators, boundary and case studies of CE are found. Based on these studies, C2C LCA
6
approach by integrating the CE settings into building through both open and close-looped
7
recycling systems and by referring to the recycling rate as a performance indicator due to
8
its complexity and long life span. LCA, MFA and design tools can be integrated to
9
facilitate the implementation of CE, where the design tools can be used to identify the
10
material flow during different stages of building, and the environmental impacts can be
11
assessed by LCA based on MFA. In addition, greater industry involvement by inviting
12
relevant stakeholders to participate in the assessment is necessary in order to enhance the
13
practical application and decision support processes.
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References
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Adams, K.T., Thorpe, T., Osmani, M., Thornback, J., 2017. Circular economy in construction: current awareness, challenges and enablers. Proc. ICE – Waste Resour. Manage. 170, 15–24. Akanbi, L.A., Oyedele, L.O., Akinade, O.O., Ajayi, A.O., Delgado, M.D., Bilal, M., Bello, S.A., 2018. Salvaging building materials in a circular economy: a BIM-based whole-life performance estimator. Resour. Conserv. Recyc. 129, 175–186. Al-Ghamdi, S.G., Bilec, M.M., 2017. Green building rating systems and whole-building life cycle assessment: comparative study of the existing assessment tools. J. Archit. Eng. 23(1), 04016015. Anand, C.K., Amor, B., 2017. Recent developments, future challenges and new research directions in LCA of buildings: a critical review. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 67, 408–416. Araújo, I.P.S., Costa, D.B., de Moraes, R.J.B., 2014. Identification and characterization of particulate matter concentrations at construction jobsites. Sustaina. 6, 7666-7688. Atmaca, A., 2016a. Life-cycle assessment and cost analysis of residential buildings in South East of Turkey: part 2—a case study. Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 21, 925–942. Atmaca, A., 2016b. Life cycle assessment and cost analysis of residential buildings in south east of Turkey: part 1—review and methodology. Int. J. Life Cycle Assess. 21, 831–846. Balasbaneh, A.T., Marsono, A.K.B., 2017. Strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from residential sector by proposing new building structures in hot and humid climatic conditions. Build. Environ. 124, 357-368. Barker, M., 2008. Time to bin industry’s lavish habits, 2008. www.constructionnews. co.uk/home/time-to-bin-industrys-lavish-habits/953199.article (accessed 08/-01-2018). Basbagill, J.P., Flager, F., Lepech, M., 2017. Measuring the impact of dynamic life cycle performance feedback on conceptual building design. J. Clean. Prod. 164, 726-735.
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Highlights •
Literature related to building-environmental research was critically analyzed.
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LCA implication on buildings was comprehensively reviewed by discussing the contemporary issues. Selected papers were critically analyzed to unveil the research trends and practices.
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Knowledge gaps for comprehensive assessment of buildings under the CE principle are identified. Comprehensive
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comprehensiveness building LCA.
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DOI:
10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.120
Reference:
JCLP 14255
To appear in:
Journal of Cleaner Production
Received Date: 24 April 2018 Revised Date:
11 August 2018
Accepted Date: 14 September 2018
Please cite this article as: Hossain MU, Ng ST, Critical consideration of buildings' environmental impact assessment towards adoption of circular economy: An analytical review, Journal of Cleaner Production (2018), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.120. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Critical Consideration of Buildings’ Environmental Impact Assessment towards
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Adoption of Circular Economy: An Analytical Review
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Md. Uzzal Hossain, S. Thomas Ng* Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong Corresponding author: Tel. (852) 2857 8556, Email. [email protected]
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Abstract: A rapid development of building environmental research from the globe is
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witnessed in recent years to deal with the environmental issues, especially in terms of
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energy consumption and carbon emissions, due to the substantial environmental
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burdens associated with the building industry. Thus, numerous scientific efforts have
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been devoted to buildings through environmental assessment like a life cycle
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assessment (LCA) and a methodological framework development. Concerning the
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rapid growth of buildings, LCA is increasingly used for assessing and mitigating the
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associated environmental impacts from material selection to the whole building
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systems. This study aims to comprehensively review the LCA implication on
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buildings by discussing the contemporary issues related to the development of this
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research field. The study considers a wide range of literature including case studies,
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reviews and surveys, and these articles are critically examined according to the
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predefined criteria developed. An in-depth analysis is also conducted on selected
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studies to unveil the criticality of the assessments and results under different
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considerations. In addition to demonstrating the research gaps for comprehensive
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assessment of buildings, the adoption of a circular economy (CE) concept is
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highlighted by providing a comprehensive framework. The findings show that
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resource recovery and resource-efficient building construction are seldom considered
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in prevailing studies. As a result, the framework proposed in this paper should help
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support a paradigm shift towards a comprehensive research for increasing the
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accuracy and practicability by introducing the CE principle to the building industry
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for enhancing its sustainability performance.
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Keywords: Buildings; Life cycle assessment; Environmental impacts; Circular
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economy; Analytical review.
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1. Introduction Life cycle assessment (LCA) is now extensively used for assessing buildings and
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built environment’s environmental impacts due to an increasing concern on resource
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utilization for building construction; energy consumption during their operation;
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waste disposal at end-of-life of buildings; and their associated environmental
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consequences. Owing to a boost in building construction globally, their operation,
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maintenance / refurbishment and deconstruction would impose even higher
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environmental burdens. Therefore, the building industry is the key target for reducing
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the environmental impacts by many governments as a result of the enhanced
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sustainability concern (Chau et al., 2015). It has already been recognized that the
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industry is responsible for consuming over 32% of the world’s resources, 25% water,
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40% energy and 12% land, and it also generates over 25% solid waste and emits about
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35% of the total greenhouse gases (GHGs) globally (Yeheyis et al., 2013; Soust-
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Verdaguer et al., 2017).
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Numerous efforts have been initiated to evaluate the environmental performance
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of different aspects related to this field, including the whole buildings, materials used,
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components / units and systems (e.g. construction process), and to find out
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opportunities for reducing their environmental impacts using the LCA technique. As a
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result, the publications related to the case studies of buildings’ LCA have more than
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doubled over the last 10 years. Moreover, the number of review papers are
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simultaneously increasing to contribute in this progressive field (Anand and Amor,
22
2017).
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Environmental impacts assessment of building materials has been performed by
24
numerous studies (Zhang et al., 2014; Hossain et al., 2017-2018). Several studies
25
focused on a specific stage of the buildings, such as the materials production (Zhang
26
and Wang, 2016), building construction (Gan et al., 2017), renovation (Ghose et al.,
27
2017; Rodrigues et al., 2018), demolition and end-of-life treatment (Coelho and de
28
Brito, 2012; Vitale et al., 2017), and the building stocks (Stephan et al., 2018).
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Many research also specifically targeted building energy consumption, including
30
embodied energy (Koezjakov et al., 2018), life cycle energy (Monteiro et al., 2016),
31
operational stage of buildings (Ginks and Painter, 2016). Some of them concentrated
32
on the carbon footprint (Sandanayake et al., 2018), embodied carbon (Gan et al.,
33
2017) and life cycle carbon (Roh and Tae, 2017) of buildings. In addition, few studies
34
highlighted the assessment of both energy and carbon (Kneifel et al., 2018), whereas 2
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 1
others proposed comprehensive assessment of buildings by integrating LCA with
2
multiple impact indicators (Heinonen et al., 2016). Moreover, a few studies examined the dynamics in LCA of buildings (Basbagill et
4
al., 2017) and LCA of prefabricated buildings (Cao et al., 2015), whereas a few
5
addressed the construction methods (Ji et al., 2018). A number of studies focused on
6
residential buildings (Roh et al., 2017; Hoxha et al., 2017), some of them were on
7
commercial buildings (Al-Ghamdi and Bilec, 2017) and a few were on educational
8
(Kumanayake and Luo, 2018) and office buildings (Wu et al., 2012).
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Some other criteria were used in assessing the environmental impacts of buildings,
10
including the principal raw materials, such as reinforced concrete (Guo et al., 2017),
11
steel (Su and Zhang, 2016) and wood (Gustavsson et al., 2010) with due consideration
12
of the variation in building levels, including high-rise (Su and Zhang, 2016), low-rise
13
(Passer et al., 2012) etc. throughout the world.
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A series of reviews was available in this research field, and most of them were
15
subjective in selecting related papers. For example, the embodied carbon of buildings
16
(Pomponi and Moncaster, 2018), life cycle carbon and energy of building (Chau et al.,
17
2015), embodied energy of buildings (Dixit, 2017), environmental evaluation of
18
buildings (Anand and Amor, 2017), building refurbishment (Vilches et al., 2017),
19
BIM-based LCA applications (Soust-Verdaguer et al., 2017), LCA tools (Tam et al.,
20
2018), bibliometric analysis (Geng et al., 2017), prefabricated buildings (Teng et al.,
21
2018), etc. Although some important research gaps were highlighted from different
22
perspectives of building assessment, none of those studies has considered integrating
23
a circular economy (CE) with LCA for more sustainable building construction. Some
24
critical factors, including the materials supply chain and sourcing, identification of
25
low impacts materials, whole life assessment of buildings including demolition,
26
salvage value of materials under the CE principle have not been considered. The CE
27
principle aims to improve the efficiency of materials and energy usage by sourcing
28
sustainable materials and integrating collaborative benefits among different industries
29
(Akanbi et al., 2018; Herczeg et al., 2018).
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All these studies have provided valuable information in better understanding the
31
research on buildings’ LCA. However, it is still valuable to unveil the research trends,
32
practices and highlights in terms of the way of assessment, and different
33
considerations and research from the abundance of publications. As a result, this study
34
aims (i) to identify the existing research scope of buildings’ LCA by critically 3
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT reviewing the relevant literature published from 2010 to February 2018; (ii) to
2
highlight the trend of research and different considerations through a general mapping
3
of the selected papers and by critically analyzing the selected case studies; and (iii) to
4
identify the knowledge gaps for comprehensive assessment of buildings, adoption of
5
the CE concept by critically analyzing the selected case studies and review papers,
6
and by providing a comprehensive framework for further research. Agenda and
7
framework proposed in this study will generate useful inputs for future research on
8
buildings’ LCA and for enhancing sustainability in the building industry as a whole.
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2. Study methodology
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This review aimed at providing a holistic overview by bringing those fragmented
12
research together into a multidisciplinary approach in order to minimize the
13
environmental impacts and improve the sustainability performance of buildings.
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2.1. Literature search
A systematic review approach together with a meta-analysis were used to review
17
the existing papers to ensure the comprehensiveness and objectivity of the papers
18
selected. The systematic review synthesizes the research by collating all evidence that
19
fits the pre-specified eligibility criteria, where the meta-analysis explains the results
20
from individual studies and integrate the findings (Teng et al., 2018). These
21
approaches have been widely adopted in the building industry in recent years (Dixit,
22
2017). A two-stage search approach was applied in this study. In the first stage, the
23
Web of Science and Scopus databases were used for searching relevant literature
24
using the predefined and specific keywords, including life cycle assessment, carbon
25
emission, greenhouse gases emission, environmental impacts, building, residential
26
building, circular economy, building, construction, building industry, environmental
27
consequences, public building, commercial building, built environment, and
28
construction industry. A non-systematic retrieval, such
29
investigation was conducted to include any additional related papers. Finally, a
30
Google search was performed using the above-mentioned keywords to retrieve
31
additional relevant papers published in other peer-reviewed journals. Due to an
32
increase of scientific publications in this field, only papers published in the peer-
33
reviewed journals between 2010 and February 2018 were considered in this study.
34
The outline of the study method is shown in Fig. 1.
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cross-reference
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2.2. Screening of the reviewed papers After identifying the potentially relevant papers, all the papers had to go through a
3
filtration process based on the screening of titles and abstracts to identify those papers
4
which closely match the scope of this study. During the filtration process, papers
5
related to energy assessment and/or simulation of buildings only, and the assessment
6
of materials level alone were excluded from the study. In addition, papers published
7
in conferences, technical reports, thesis, books and book chapters were eliminated due
8
to large number of scientific publications in the peer-reviewed journals. After
9
removing the duplication from the collected papers, the remaining literature were analyzed in full-text to select the appropriate articles for classification and review.
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2.3. Classification of the reviewed papers
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Of the 256 papers retrieved, 230 were related to buildings while 37 were related to CE
14
(primarily on CE methodology, buildings or construction). After examining the
15
abstract of the papers, 181 papers were selected for further study with 155 papers
16
directly related to buildings being used for in-depth analysis and general mapping.
17
Among these 155 papers, 36 were case study type and 19 of them were selected for
18
comparative analysis based on their comprehensiveness as they contained sufficient
19
information to fulfill the scope of this study. The papers were selected based on some
20
criteria, i.e. they contain clear information on the system boundary, functional unit,
21
life time, types and level of building, types of LCA and method used, principal
22
building materials, sensitivity analysis, waste management consideration, and
23
highlight of at least one environmental impact indicator as a result of the study. In
24
addition, the literature (26 out of 37 papers) related to CE were separately analyzed
25
thoroughly in a separate section (primarily related to the fundamental of CE and its
26
applications, CE in building and construction, etc.). In this study, 81 studies (chosen
27
from a total of 256) were delineated for critical analysis based on several pre-defined
28
criteria, in which 36 were related building related case specific LCA, 19 were related
29
to building’s LCA review, and 26 were related to CE. It is believed that the selection
30
of 32% of study for comprehensive analysis is enough for the completeness of data
31
collection from a large sample (Fig. 1).
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2.4. General mapping of the literature A total 15 criteria were developed for general mapping of literature. The criteria
3
include the type of buildings, building topography, location, LCA boundary, scope in
4
building, type of LCA, research method, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method,
5
life cycle inventory (LCI) data, impact categories, significant impacts, life time
6
consideration, principle building materials, waste management consideration, and
7
sensitivity / uncertainty analysis. The criteria provided significant insights for
8
identifying the research topics which have been published previously, and also for
9
understanding the importance and necessitate of research in this area according to the
10
temporal and spatial contexts. In addition, the mapping can be effectively used for
11
cross-context comparison (Teng et al., 2018).
12
2.5. Discussion and future research direction
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Based on the general mapping of literature, the selected case study papers, the
15
reviewed literature and CE related papers, an in-depth investigation was conducted to
16
identify the existing research trends and areas, different considerations, and research /
17
knowledge gap. Finally, an effective comparison of results was provided, and future
18
research direction was identified accordingly to encourage more comprehensive
19
adoption of CE into the building industry.
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 1 Objectives of the study
2 3
Search targeted literature
5
Using • Keywords • Publication years
Systematic search
6
8
Screening for identifying the eligible literature (retrieved 256)
Exclude conference papers, reports and thesis
Selected 181 papers in general
General mapping using 15 predefined criteria
9 10
13 14 15 16 17 18
Analysis for further investigation (using 11 selected variables)
Selected 19 relevant review papers
Analysis of CE adoption
Overview and comprehensive analysis
Discussion (important findings and comparisons, critical analysis and considerations, analyzing gaps, providing framework for comprehensiveness and adoption of CE) and conclusions
Fig. 1. Outline of the study methodology.
19 20
Selected 26 papers related to CE
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Selected 36 papers for analysis (based on comprehensiveness)
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General search
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3. General mapping of the literature
A total of 155 literature directly related to LCA of buildings were selected for
22
general mapping to identify the areas of research interests, considerations and trends
23
of research direction in the scientific community (studies given in the Supplementary
24
Information: Studies used in General Mapping).
26 27
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3.1. Temporal trends
The number of publications has significantly increase in the past years indicating
28
that the research related to this topic has attracted huge attention from the scientific
29
community due to an increasing environmental concern in the building industry (Fig.
30
2; considered papers published in 2018 is not included). This may be due to a growing
31
concern of fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions given rise by energy
32
generation, as well as a particular concern over climate change in recent years
33
globally (Geng et al., 2017; Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017). In addition, promoting
7
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 1
sustainability concern in the building industry due to an increasing building
2
construction and resource diminution is the main focused in this research field, and
3
thus, the number of scientific contributions is increasing accordingly.
4 40 R² = 0.857
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Number of papers
35 30 25 20 15
5 2010
2011
2014
2015
2016
2017
Fig. 2. Selected buildings’ LCA papers published from 2010 to 2017.
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2013
Studied year
5 6
2012
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3.2. Spatial trends
The spatial pattern of publications has been changing linearly (based on the
10
selected papers in this study). It can be seen that Europe leads the number of LCA
11
study of buildings (about 48%), while Asia, North America, Oceania and South
12
America were about 31%, 14%, 6% and 1%, respectively. However, most of the
13
publications related to buildings were from North America and Europe up to 2014
14
(Cabeza et al., 2014; Geng et al., 2017). Due to construction boosting and increasing
15
sustainability concern in Asia, relevant research has gained increasing attention in
16
recent years. Based on the selected papers and year of publications, it can be seen that
17
the top five publications were from USA, China, Portugal, UK and South Korea,
18
respectively (Fig. 3).
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Fig. 3. Selected buildings’ LCA papers published in different regions.
4
3.3. Buildings category
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Residential buildings were the key scientific interests, as more than 60% of the
6
studies focused on residential buildings (e.g. Hoxha et al., 2017; Sibilio et al., 2017),
7
and only few were on non-residential buildings (12%) (e.g. Onat et al., 2014; Al-
8
Ghamdi and Bilec, 2017). The rest are on common type of buildings (i.e. unspecified
9
but primarily focusing on the components / units of buildings or those surveys based
10
studies) (e.g. Zhao et al., 2018). For the purpose of this study, 1-5 stories was
11
considered low-rise, whereas 6-10 stories being mid-rise and higher than 10 stories
12
was regarded high-rise building. Nearly half of the studies concentrated on low-rise
13
buildings (mostly from Europe) (e.g. Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic, 2012; Chastas et
14
al., 2017), and about 23%, 15% and 15% focused on high-rise mostly from Asia (e.g.
15
Gan et al., 2017; Roh and Tae, 2017), mid-rise (e.g. Atmaca, 2016b; Lee et al., 2017)
16
and unspecified (related to survey and review) (e.g. Stephan et al., 2018),
17
respectively. In addition, about 80% of the studies considered the whole building
18
assessment as compared to 13% on building components (e.g. Schwartz et al., 2018)
19
and 7% on different units of building (e.g. Silvestre et al., 2013) (Fig. 4).
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3.4. LCA perspectives
22
Among the selected papers, about 63% were case-specific studies (e.g. Dong et
23
al., 2015; Atmaca, 2016b; Rodrigues et al., 2018), 15% were survey type studies (e.g.
24
Giesekam et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2018), 15% were literature review (e.g. De Wolf et 9
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT al., 2017; Schwartz et al., 2018) and 7% were others. Regarding the life cycle stage
2
consideration, about 22%, 13% and 45% of the studies considered the cradle-to-gate,
3
cradle-to-site and cradle-to-grave system boundaries respectively, while 2% of the
4
studies considered the cradle-to-cradle system boundary and 13% only focused on
5
renovation. Although 45% of the studies considered ‘cradle-to-grave’ system
6
boundary into their assessment, most of them did not critically consider the waste
7
treatment (and resource recovery) at different stages of building. Some of them
8
considered waste treatment at end-of-life stage only.
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About 61% of the building LCA studies have focused on assessing the impacts of
10
residential buildings, while only 18% for non-residential (office, educational and
11
office) buildings, and the rest were mostly on the component / unit of buildings. In
12
addition, about 45%, 17%, 8% and 30% of the studies were conducted based on a
13
processed-based LCA, input-out LCA (Onat et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2016), hybrid
14
LCA (Moon et al., 2014; Jang et al., 2015) and unspecified (mainly the review
15
studies). Regarding the impact assessment method, more than half of the study did not
16
specify the method as they calculated the impact (mostly carbon or energy
17
consumption) by developed equations. However, CML, IPCC, ReCiPe and TRACI
18
were the most common LCIA methods used in the selected studies. This may be due
19
to the freedom of authors in selecting methodology for LCA studies, or individual
20
preference and objectives of the studies. Most of the results were also supported by
21
previous studies (Chastas et al., 2018). In addition, more than half of the studies
22
assessed single (carbon, energy or both) impact (Hong et al., 2017; Gan et al., 2017)
23
and 42% assessed multiple impact indicators (Silvestre et al., 2013; Sibilio et al.,
24
2017) (Fig. 4). Regarding the life cycle inventory data, nearly half of the studies
25
directly adopted databases in their assessment, whereas only 9% used first-hand data,
26
secondary sources by 31% studies, and 15% applied combined of first-hand,
27
secondary source and databases. The results indicate that comprehensive evaluation
28
by extending to the full life cycle of buildings or further extending to cradle-to-cradle
29
towards the adoption of the CE principle was still rare in many studies.
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Fig. 4. General mapping of the selected studies.
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3.5. Life span consideration
Comparison of results among different studies is often difficult under various
5
considerations, especially in terms of the life span consideration. The service life of
6
materials and components could lead to a potential variation in the results, with lower
7
environmental impacts indicating higher life expectancy values (Chastas et al., 2018).
8
Due to a wide variety of life time selection, this study classified all the papers into
9
seven groups (Fig. 5). Based on the classifications, about 65% of the studies chose a
10
41-50 years’ life span of buildings, and less than 30 years by 10% (Kua and Wong,
11
2012), 51-60 years by 8% (Hafliger et al., 2017), 61-70% years by 5% (Vitale et al.,
12
2017; Kneifel et al., 2018), 71-80 years by 6% (Hu, 2017), and more than 80 years by
13
only 4% (Lewandowska et al., 2015) (Fig. 5).
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5%
4% 10% 2% >30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 >80
8%
65%
Consideration of life time of buildings
2
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Fig. 5. Buildings life span consideration by the selected studies.
3 4
3.6. Waste management consideration in buildings assessment
The management of waste generated from construction, renovation and end-of-life
6
of buildings is very important for resource recovery and the adoption of the CE
7
principle into the building industry. Yet, most of the studies (about 69%) did not
8
consider waste management in their assessment (Atmaca, 2016a,b; Al-Ghamdi and
9
Bilec, 2017). Some of them took waste management into consideration at the end-of-
10
life stage only (about 27%) (Collinge et al., 2013; Hoxha et al., 2017), and a few at
11
the renovation stage (Schwartz et al., 2018; Stephan et al., 2018) (Fig. 6). Most
12
importantly, waste generation during the construction stage was not considered in
13
most of the studies (Dahlstrøm et al., 2012), despite a significant wastage level was
14
recorded at the construction stage. For example, about 15% of the wastage level was
15
recorded in the UK (Barker, 2008), whereas a significant amount of construction
16
waste was generated during the construction process in Hong Kong (about 0.48-0.60
17
m3/m2 of the construction floor area) (CIC, 2017).
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Renovati on stage 3%
Construct ion stage 1%
End-oflife stage 27%
Not considere d 69%
19 20
Fig. 6. Consideration of waste management in buildings LCA studies.
21 22 23 24 12
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4. Analysis of the selected literature
2
4.1. General features It has already been stated that 36 papers were selected for in-depth analysis, based
4
on their comprehensiveness in terms of coverage throughout the world from
5
residential to non-residential (i.e. commercial, office and educational) buildings, with
6
different climates and building heights. Even though plenty of relevant literature are
7
available, a lack of detailed descriptions, results and other considerations have led to
8
their exclusion from this analysis. The samples are assumed to be large enough to
9
capture the general research directions and different considerations in buildings’ LCA
10
study. However, comparability is an important issue that usually relates to high
11
uncertainty in the LCA study. Based on the predefined criteria (which is supported by
12
different studies (Geng et al., 2017; Chastas et al., 2018), the details of the selected
13
papers are presented in Table 1.
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Similar to the general mapping presented in Section 3.3, LCA research is
15
dominated by the residential buildings (Roh et al., 2017), and a few are on
16
commercial (Hong et al., 2015), office (Gan et al., 2017) and educational buildings
17
(Kumanayake and Luo, 2018). There are three major types of LCA being considered
18
in building LCAs, including the process-based method, input-output (I-O) method,
19
and hybrid method. Process-based method is relatively straightforward that can
20
provide more accurate results, but it depends on the data from system processes.
21
While the I-O method can handle high quality data, it requires the maintenance of a
22
comprehensive set of input / output data. In some studies, these methods were
23
combined and adopted as a hybrid method (Zeng and Chini, 2017). Most of these
24
studies chose the process-based LCA with a cradle-to-grave system boundary, where
25
the life span consideration was ranging from 30 to 100 years (Table 1). In addition,
26
almost all ‘cradle-to-grave’ LCA studies only considered the end-of-life waste
27
management, except one that considered waste management at the construction stage
28
(Dahlstrøm et al., 2012). Waste management at the operational stage (e.g. for
29
renovation) was considered in two studies (Ghose et al., 2017; Rodrigues et al., 2018),
30
despite these studies only focused on building retrofit.
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Due to the complex nature of buildings, LCA results are often sensitive to
32
different issues and considerations. However, about one-third of the papers consider
33
sensitivity or uncertainty analysis (Table 1). Because of the dynamic nature, some
34
studies pointed out several important aspects in their studies, including the change of 13
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT energy sources and waste management scenarios, use of different LCI databases for
2
different materials, and different LCIA methods (Ortiz-Rodríguez et al., 2010); the
3
choice of insulation materials, building lifespans and heat recovery systems (Dodoo et
4
al., 2014); a change in electricity mix (Dahlstrøm et al., 2012); an improvement in
5
structural and non-structural elements (Hoxha et al., 2017); the building materials’
6
production, transportation and electricity used (Rashid and Yusoff, 2015); a change in
7
the formwork systems, transportation of precast elements and adoption of biodiesel
8
(Dong and Ng, 2015); a variation in recycling efficiency, marginal suppliers and
9
potential change in electricity grid mix (Ghose et al., 2017), and so on.
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System boundary
Types of LCA
Study type
LCIA method
Principle building materials
Life time (years)
Residential Residential
M L
C-t-Gr C-t-Gr
P P
C C
-CML, CED
50, 100 50
Residential
L
C-t-Gr
P
C
CML
50
End-of-life
Bastos et al. (2014)
UK Spain and Colombia Sweden Portugal
Wood-framed Composite Brick and block frame
Waste management consideration Construction stage; End-of-life End-of-life
Residential Residential Residential
L L L
C-t-Gr C-t-Gr C-t-Gr
P P P
C C C
CML ---
50 50 75
Dahlstrøm et al. (2012)
Norway
Residential
L
C-t-Gr
P
C
Moon et al. (2014)
South Korea
Residential
H
C-t-Ga
Hy
C
Atmaca (2016a) Zhang and Wang (2016)
Turkey
Residential
M, H
C-t-Gr
P
C
China Belgium, Portugal, Sweden
Residential
H
C-t-Ga
P/I-O
C
Residential
L
C-t-S
P
C
USA
Commercial
M
C-t-Gr
Portugal
Residential
L
R
Sri Lanka
M
C-t-Gr
Australia and UK
Educational Commercial Residential
H
C-t-Ga
Vitale et al. (2018)
Italy
Residential
Hoxha et al. (2017) Lewandowska et al. (2015) Balasbaneh and Marsono (2017)
France
Residential
L
Poland
Residential
L
Malaysia
L
Wu et al. (2017)
China
Residential Residential Commercial
H, M, L
Rossi et al. (2012) Al-Ghamdi and Bilec (2017) Rodrigues et al. (2018) Kumanayake and Luo (2018) Sandanayake et al. (2018)
ReCiPe IPCC
IPCC
CML
P
C
TRACI
--
C
ReCiPe
P
C
--
P
C
C-t-Gr
P
C
-IMPACT 2002+
C-t-Gr
--
S
C-t-S
Hy
C
CML IMPACT 2002+
C-t-Gr
P
C
IPCC
C-t-Gr
--
S
Guo et al. (2017)
China
Residential
H, M, L
C-t-Gr
P
C
Kim et al. (2015)
South Korea
Educational
H
C-t-Gr
I-O
C
SC
Sweden Austria
Composite Wood Composite
--
15
Sensitivity analysis (10) × ×
Wood Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete
50
End-of-life End-of-life × Construction stage; End-of-life
×
×
×
50
×
×
Composite Steel framed; Masonry
×
×
×
50
×
×
Composite
60
End-of-life
×
50
Retrofit
50
End-of-life
×
×
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Passer et al. (2012) Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic (2012) Ortiz-Rodríguez et al. (2010) Dodoo et al. (2014)
Types of building
EP
Gustavsson et al. (2010)
Location
AC C
Study
RI PT
Level of building
TE D
Table 1. General features of the selected studies.
Composite Concrete and Wood
(1) (2) (1) (3)
(4) × (4)
Composite
50
End-of-life
×
Multiple
50
End-of-life
(5)
Wood Block, Concrete, Steel, Wood
100
×
×
50
End-of-life
×
Composite Reinforced concrete; Wood
50
End-of-life
×
50
End-of-life
×
Composite
65
End-of-life
×
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Residential South Korea Germany/ Austria
Educational
×
C-t-Ga
Hy
C
IPCC
Reinforced concrete
Residential
L, M
C-t-Gr
P
C
--
Wood buildings
UK
Residential
×
C-t-Gr
P
C
IPCC
Gan et al. (2017) Nadoushani and Akbarnezhad (2015)
Hong Kong
Composite
H
C-t-Ga
P
C
IPCC
USA
Commercial
L, H
C-t-Gr
P
C
--
Su and Zhang (2016) Heinonen et al. (2016)
China
Residential
M, H
C-t-Ga
Hy
C
IPCC
Finland
Residential
M
C-t-Ga
P
C
ReCiPe
Peng (2016)
China
H
C-t-Gr
×
C
Hong et al. (2015)
China
Office Office and Commercial
H
C-t-Ga
P
C
Dong and Ng (2015)
Hong Kong
Residential
H
C-t-Ga
P
C
Ghose et al. (2017)
New Zealand
Office
×
R
×
C
Roh and Tae (2017)
South Korea
Residential
H
C-t-Gr
P
C
IPCC
IPCC
ReCiPe CML/ILCD 2011
×
50
End-of-life
×
Composite Reinforced concrete Concrete; Steel framed
50
End-of-life
×
×
×
×
50
End-of-life
×
Steel framed
×
×
×
Concrete Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete
×
×
×
50
End-of-life
×
×
×
(6)
×
×
(7)
×
Renovation
(8)
SC ×
Composite 40 End-of-life × Reinforced Roh et al. (2017) South Korea Residential H C-t-Ga P C CML concrete × × × Kua and Wong Reinforced (2012) Singapore Commercial M C-t-Gr Hy C IPCC concrete 30 End-of-life (9) [H, High-rise; M, Mid-rise; L, Low-rise; P, Process-based; I-O, Input-Output; Hy, Hybrid; C, Case study; S, Survey; R, Refurbishment; C-t-Gr, Cradle-to- Grave; C-t-Ga, Cradle-to-Gate; C-t-S, Cradle-to-Site; (1) Change energy source and waste management scenario, use different LCI databases for different materials, and different LCIA methods; (2) Choice of insulation, building lifespan, heat recovery, etc.; (3) Change in electricity mix; (4) Monte Carlo simulation; (5) Structural and non-structural elements; (6) Building materials production, transportation and electricity use; (7) Formwork systems, transportation of precast elements, adoption of biodiesel; (8) Recycling efficiency, marginal suppliers, and potential change in electricity grid mix; (9) Waste management (during operation); (10) Change of materials quantity].
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4.2. Consideration of impacts categories Carbon emissions (including the embodied and life cycle) are the most common
3
environmental impact category selected in buildings’ LCA. In addition, half of the
4
studies measured energy consumption (embodied and life cycle) in their assessment.
5
Many of the selected case studies (about 40%) used a single impact indicator (carbon
6
emission or energy consumption) (Dodoo et al., 2014; Hafner et al., 2017; Roh and
7
Tae, 2017) or two impact categories (carbon and energy consumption) (Atmaca,
8
2016a; Wu et al., 2017). This is a very common feature in LCA studies (Anand and
9
Amor, 2017), as the selection of impact category is very open and subject to
10
individual preference. However, carbon emissions or energy consumption are
11
intensity indicators only unless they are objectively assessed. Critical consideration of
12
other impact indicators is essential when it comes to comprehensive assessment. This
13
is because some impacts categories are more intensive and critical in some
14
perspectives than these two. For example, particulate emissions and potential leaching
15
during construction and waste management can be vital considerations (Araújo et al.,
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2014; Butera et al., 2014). However, the basis of selection of particular impact
17
categories is not often clearly stated in buildings’ LCA studies (Anand and Amor,
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2017).
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Several aspects were identified by different studies on the choice of impact
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categories (Chau et al., 2015). The most important ones are the lack of
21
standardization, as well as lack of data to support appropriate assessment of the
22
categories. In addition, the relevancy to a particular study and the support of a specific
23
category in a LCA tool or method, and an intentional avoidance of comprehensive
24
assessment by integrating multiple indicators may be other influential factors. These
25
may not only lead to the failure in accounting for certain impacts, but also the
26
ignorance of certain essential impact categories (Anand and Amor, 2017). For
27
example, water consumption (water depletion) can be an important consideration due
28
to the long life span of buildings. However, only few studies assessed water
29
consumption (Dahlstrøm et al., 2012), and another study included that during the
30
building construction stage (Dong and Ng, 2015). Only one third of the selected case
31
studies chose multiple impact categories in their assessment (Passer et al., 2012; Roh
32
et al., 2017) (Supplementary Information, S-Table 1).
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4.3. Comparison of LCA results The comparison of LCA results among different studies are still an unsolved issue
3
(Anand and Amor, 2017). Different studies identified and highlighted several factors,
4
including the type of buildings, raw materials of buildings, system boundaries, LCIA
5
methodologies, use of different energy measurement, types of LCI data, temporal and
6
spatial scale, completeness of the data, technology used of the manufacturing
7
processes, life span of buildings, etc. (Dixit, 2012). The comparison of LCA results is
8
important for benchmarking the existing practices, as well as setting up targets for
9
reducing environmental impacts for new construction. However, there is still no
10
consensus on the results comparison among various scientific studies (Anand and
11
Amor, 2017; Peng, 2016).
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As this could hinder results comparison in building’s LCA, the authors have
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attempted to make such comparison based on some predefined criteria shown in Table
14
2 (and Supplementary Information S-Table 2), i.e. by selecting the two impact
15
categories (carbon emissions and energy consumption) from the selected 36 literature.
16
Although the consideration of functional unit and lifespan of the buildings can be
17
harmonized, still the comparison is problematic due to different considerations at
18
different life cycle stages of buildings among the studies (Table 2). Despite several
19
studies had considered ‘cradle-to-grave’ system boundary, some of them did not
20
consider the renovation impacts (Guo et al., 2017; Roh and Tae, 2017). Most
21
importantly, waste management scenarios during the construction and renovation
22
stages were not taken into account in many studies (Table 2).
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4.3.1. Carbon emissions
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To make effective comparison, this study categorized the results by several ways.
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First, the comparison was based on residential and non-residential (e.g. commercial,
27
educational and office) buildings with a ‘cradle-to-grave’ system boundary and a 50
28
years’ lifespan. The buildings are mostly constructed with reinforced concrete,
29
concrete and steel structures. Then, we compared residential buildings where wood
30
was the principal building materials with a 50 years’ lifespan and a ‘cradle-to-grave’
31
system boundary. Finally, all buildings (including residential and non-residential),
32
where a ‘cradle-to-gate’ system boundary were considered (Fig. 7). For residential
33
buildings, the variation in carbon emissions is quite high in different studies, ranging
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2
variation was observed for non-residential buildings (ranging from 2,500 kg CO2
3
eq/m2 to 11,985 kg CO2 eq/m2) (Fig. 7B). The variation of wood constructed
4
residential buildings was very high too, ranging from 207 kg CO2 eq/m2 to 6,276 kg
5
CO2 eq/m2 (Fig. 7C). This variation was mainly due to the height of buildings,
6
transportation of materials, energy sources, selected LCI data, and consideration of
7
different processes at different stages of buildings. However, when a ‘cradle-to-gate’
8
system boundary was considered, the variation was quite low compared to the cradle-
9
to-grave system boundary (Fig. 7D), as the carbon emissions are ranging from 406 kg
10
CO2 eq/m2 to 1,022 kg CO2 eq/m2. This is may be due to a lower complexity
11
associated with the life span, except the types of materials used, transport and
12
technology for construction used in the studies.
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The comparison of all of the selected 36 studies is not possible due to different
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system boundary, functional unit, life span and other considerations. For example,
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Gustavsson et al. (2010) conducted life cycle carbon emission of wood-framed
16
apartment building (mainly used wood-based building materials) in Sweden with the
17
focus of bioenergy recovery from wood residues and production of secondary wood-
18
based products from the recovered wood materials generated for the production of
19
building materials, building construction, renovation and demolition. The study also
20
considered the carbon balance for the bioenergy recovery from the wood residue
21
derived from the production and demolition of building with the lifespan of 50 and
22
100 years, and found the carbon emission of -62 and 251 kg CO2 eq/m2 for 50 years
23
and 100 years, respectively due to the consideration of avoided emission of fossil
24
energy that substituted by bioenergy.
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It can also be seen from Fig. 2 that waste management at construction and
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renovation stages was not considered in most of the studies, whereas some of them
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considered waste management at the end-of-life of building. However, waste
28
treatment and materials recovery at every stage of building have to be considered
29
critically for adopting the CE principle into building, as well as for the enhancing the
30
accuracy of the assessment.
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Table 2. Carbon emission (kg CO2 eq) of buildings by the selected studies.
Guo et al. (2017) Guo et al. (2017) Kim et al. (2015) Jang et al. (2015) Hafner and Schafer (2017) Moncaster and Symons (2013) Gan et al. (2017) Nadoushani and Akbarnezhad (2015) Su and Zhang (2016) Heinonen et al. (2016) Peng (2016)
(-)62-251 2550-3250 3391 2512 -18 1657 455-536 416-461 5,809 34-38 6421-7725 571-964 1176 523.6 (Cr) 508.8 (T) 1780-2060 450-1900 -11900 (Cr), 2040 (T) 2660-4108 (R), 3371-11,985 (C)
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6815.4-7242.9 (Rc)
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End-of-life stage Waste Demolition management √ √ √ √ 42 -109 25 × --× × √ √ × × × × 0.0197 × × × × √ × × 8 2 × × × × √ √ √ √ × × √ √ √ √
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Gustavsson et al. (2010) Passer et al. (2012) Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic (2012) Ortiz-Rodríguez et al. (2010) Dodoo et al. (2014) Bastos et al. (2014) Dahlstrøm et al. (2012) Moon et al. (2014) Zhang and Wang (2016) Atmaca (2016a) Rossi et al. (2012) Al-Ghamdi and Bilec (2017) Rodrigues et al. (2018) Kumanayake and Luo (2018) Sandanayake et al. (2018) Sandanayake et al. (2018) Vitale et al. (2018) Hoxha et al. (2017) Lewandowska et al. (2015) Balasbaneh and Marsono (2017) Wu et al. (2017)
Construction stage Operational stage Raw Construction Waste Waste FU materials stage management Use Renovation management m2 √ √ √ √ × × m2 √ √ × √ √ × 362 × 3097 × m2 m2 192 × 2250 45 × -------m2.y √ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ √ √ √ × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 582 × 5227 × × m2.y √ × × √ × × m2 96-106 × 6325-7619 √ × m2 × × × × 571-964 m2 495 19 614 38 m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ × √ √ × -√ × × √ × × m2 √ √ × √ √ m2 √ √ × √ √ 6532.1265.3-308.2 × 6916.70 × × m2 5967.9m2 (-97.4 to -84) × 6314.1 × × -√ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ × √ √ × m2 √ √ × × √ × m2 √ × × × × × m2 √ √ × √ × × m2 √ √ × × × × m2 √ √ √ × × × m2 √ √ × √ × ×
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45.6-52.3 √ × √ × × √ × × √
√ × √ √ × √ × × √
Total
5922.8-6275.7 (T) -767 77-207 -497 2500 1022 406 5077
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√ √ × 476.58
√ √ × 21.32 477
√
√
× × × × × ×
× × × 1448.35 × √
× ×
× × 88.5- 123.4
× × √
× × ×
× × ×
× × ×
25.17
× √
× √
757 637 88.5- 123.4 1971.42 477 3249
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[FU, Functional unit; R, Residential buildings; C, Commercial buildings; Cr, Concrete building; T, Timber framed building; Rc, Reinforced concrete buildings]
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Hong et al. (2015) Dong and Ng (2015) Ghose et al. (2017) Roh and Tae (2017) Roh et al. (2017) Kua and Wong (2012)
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Fig. 7. Carbon emission of buildings in the selected LCA studies.
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4.3.2. Energy consumption
Compared to carbon emissions, the assessment of energy consumption is more
6
complex, and thus, more than a half of the studies did not consider this in their
7
assessment, due to different considerations (e.g. life time), sources of energy, selected
8
LCI, energy consumption drivers, building envelope and other designs, different
9
stages of consumption, etc. (Supplementary Information S-Table 2).
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A comparison of the LCA results of energy consumption for residential buildings
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is shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that the variation of energy consumption is quite
12
high among the studies, even with the same lifespan (e.g. 50 years) and system
13
boundary (e.g. cradle-to-grave) considerations. For example, it was ranging from 28
14
GJ/m2 to 61 GJ/m2 for the whole life cycle of buildings. However, the upper value is
15
still lower for residential buildings (e.g. 61 GJ/m2) than the commercial buildings (62
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GJ/m2) (Wu et al., 2017). In addition, no significant variation was observed for the
17
selection of principal building materials (Fig. 8).
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Fig. 8. Energy consumption of residential buildings in the selected LCA studies.
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5. Overview of the reviewed papers
Several reviews regarding the carbon footprint, embodied energy, and environmental
8
impacts were conducted in this field of research, especially on residential buildings. Due
9
to the increasing scientific attention in building / construction, number of contributions of
10
LCA research has been increasing, including the case study, survey and review papers.
11
Reviews are particularly important for finding out the existing research trends, scientific
12
interests / hotspot, research gaps and future direction, as well as the reflections of a
13
particular research field.
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In this study, 19 reviews were selected which were directly related to buildings’ LCA
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for summarizing their study focus and findings (Table 3). Each review study focused on
16
analyzing some specific directions of the study. Some of them emphasized on the
17
embodied carbon of buildings and residential buildings, life cycle carbon and energy of
18
buildings and residential buildings, and embodied energy of buildings. Some of them
19
were devoted to the environmental evaluation of buildings. In addition, few studies
20
particularly discussed the environmental evaluation of building refurbishment, and
21
carbon footprint of refurbishment and new buildings, dynamic LCA in buildings, BIM-
22
based LCA applications, LCA tools in building assessment, bibliometric analysis of
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building LCA study, and environmental and cost impacts of green building development.
2
In addition, a recent study analyzed the carbon emissions of prefabricated buildings
3
(Teng et al., 2018). The implications of these reviews are highlighted in Table 3, where contributions of
5
the existing literature were summarized to pointing out the existing gaps and
6
recommendations for further research. In most of the studies, waste management at
7
different stages of buildings was not critically considered due to the assumption of lesser
8
contributions to the total impacts. However, critical assessment of waste generation and
9
management at different stages of buildings are important together with the selection of
10
building materials at the early design stage for adopting the CE principle to the building
11
industry, as the industry is now shifting from a linear to circular paradigm with the aim of
12
achieving / enhancing the sustainability performance of the industry.
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Table 3. Overview of the literature review regarding LCA of buildings. Location Hong Kong
Dixit (2017) USA
Analyzed embodied energy in residential buildings
Analyzed embodied carbon in buildings
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Study focus Life cycle energy and carbon emission of building construction
Highlights • Findings, as well as limitations from previous LCA studies were discussed as decision support tools for sustainable building design. • Major discrepancies were concluded due to different compositions of fuel mixes, functional unit, data inventory and practices, boundary scoping and methodology choice. • Waste management during construction and renovation was not considered. • Significant variation of embodied energy among studies was found due to choose of system boundary, energy input, sources of energy, method of calculation, sources of data, data completeness and representativeness, etc. • The study suggested to develop probability distribution of uncertainties of methodological and data quality parameters associated with the assessment. • Mainly focused on the structural materials during production phase. • Waste management during construction and renovation was not considered. • Suggested to assess the embodied carbon during design stage of buildings for early decision support. • Remarkable variability was concluded due to data variability that can lead to a 284-1044% variation of embodied carbon coefficient. • A total 95 case studies were analyzed consisted of conventional, passive, low energy and nearly zero energy residential buildings. • The sharing of embodied carbon was ranges from 9% to 80% to the total impact. • High variation of results were observed due to differences in the energy mix, LCI data or overall building design. Thus, the study suggests normalization and standardization in LCA of residential buildings.
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Chastas et al. (2018)
Greece
Reviewed embodied carbon emissions of residential buildings
Vilches et al. (2017)
Spain
Summarized and analyzed the environmental evaluation of building refurbishment
• Most LCA studies have mainly focused on the evaluation of the building before and after energy retrofitting. • The renovation in walls and roofs system, preplacing windows, improving the efficiency of air conditioning, and installing PV panels were the most retrofit measures. • The study identified the energy required for using new materials (embodied and disposal) between 10 and 60% of the total energy. • The study recommended to evaluate the environmental, economic and social
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China
Framework for dynamic LCA in buildings
De Wolf et al. (2017)
UK
Analyzed embodied carbon emission and mitigation in buildings
Zeng and Chini (2017)
USA
Tam et al. (2018)
Australia
Analyzed embodied energy of buildings LCA tools in buildings
Cabeza et al. (2014)
Spain
Islam et al. (2015)
Australia
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BIM-based LCA to buildings
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consequences resulting from the extension of the life cycle of buildings. • BIM can contribute to simplify data input, and optimize results during the LCA application in buildings during early stages of design. • Most of the case studies utilized BIM models during LCI stage. • The data contained in BIM databases are not enough to develop the LCA application itself. • Difficult to include several life cycle stages into BIM-based LCA assessment. • The study recommended future development with improve and standardize BIM integration into LCA for comprehensive assessment. • Identified a new framework consisted of four dynamic building properties, including technological progress, variation in occupancy behavior, dynamic characteristic factors, and dynamic weighting factors. • Examples of such dynamic issues were: dynamic material and energy consumption in maintenance stage; dynamic recovery and renewable rate, dynamic energy mix, etc. that can affect the whole building’s life cycle. • The study suggested further case-specific study using the dynamic framework. • The study reviewed academic and professional literature, as well as survey using focus groups and interviews with industry experts to reduce embodied carbon emission from buildings. • The study suggested to improve data quality, and develop a transparent and simplified methodology for assessment. • Establishing emission (or impacts) benchmark is important, otherwise it is difficult to use from a wide variety of results. • Industry collaboration would be helpful in accuracy of the assessment. • Bibliometrically analyzed the researches on embodied energy of buildings. • Highlights important keywords, citation hotspots, shifting patterns of interest, trending interests, and major research topics in this research field. • Evaluated the appropriateness of LCA tools (e.g., software) for building's LCA along with achieving Green Star's requirements in reducing GHG emissions during the lifetime of a building. • Both SimaPro and GaBi LCA software can be used in building LCA study along with other tools for better geographical representation or building itself. • Localized or regionalized tool and databases for assessment was encouraged. • Most studies have focused on exemplary buildings instead of traditional buildings. • Similarly, most studies have focused on assessment in urban areas, and not well documented literature were found for rural areas. • Studies were mostly focused on Europe and North America. • Only a few life cycle costing paper was available. • The relationship between the impact categories and life stages is complex. • About 88% of the total life cycle cost was directly related to the construction and maintenance. • Comprehensive evaluation of environmental and cost impacts should be assessed in future based on stakeholders’ demand. • Significant variation was observed due to wide range of choices and assumptions made in different studies. • Dynamic LCA in buildings can be adopted, but uncertainties regarding dynamics should be addressed. • LCA can be integrated and used in building certification systems, but again verification of such integration is necessary for avoiding high uncertainty from building certification. • Application of LCA is limited in the building industry due to the lack of integration of building related design tools, and thus suggested to make it more useful in the industry. • The study argued the industry involvement or collaboration is necessary for methodology/ database development, integration in practices and environmental friendly decision making. • The results of environmental and economic assessment should go to the construction industry, although the uptake of such results by the industry is
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Life cycle energy and cost analysis in buildings
Life cycle impacts and cost analysis in residential buildings
Anand and Amor (2017)
Canada
Focused on embodied energy and integration of LCA in building certifications
Zuo et al. (2017)
Australia
Analyzed environmental
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Geng et al. (2017)
China
Bibliometric analysis of building LCA research
Soares et al. (2017)
Portugal
Energy and environmental performance of buildings
Schwartz et al. (2018)
UK
Analyzed carbon footprint of refurbished and new buildings
Teng et al. (2018)
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Synthesized the options for reducing carbon emission through prefabrication
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Highlighted the sustainable refurbishment options for residential buildings
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rather slow. Thus, simplified methods for assessment are suggested. • The study also highlighted the need for relevant LCI database, especially for regional/country specific. • The study suggests standardization in buildings LCA in terms of method used. • Only a few study has focused on LCA of sustainable refurbishment strategies. • Most of the studies have focused on studies of single refurbishment methods, such as insulation, shading and photovoltaic panels, while refurbishment of lighting, air-conditioning and other building service equipment were often neglected. • From the review, the study identified 88 sustainable refurbishment solutions under the three broad categories, such as building service, building envelope and renewable energy. • According to climate and building condition, the study identified 39 relevant sustainable refurbishment solutions for residential buildings in Hong Kong. • Evaluated and quantified the patterns of publications addressing building LCA research characteristics such as authorships, citations, and impact factor. • Temporal and spatial retrieval of publications related to building LCA research. • Identified hotspots in the building LCA research. • Top five topics were highlighted related to building LCA research, such as energy, material, carbon, sustainability and technology. • Potential strategies for improving the energy and environmental performance of buildings are delineated based on multidisciplinary approaches, including the model of unpredictable data, linkage to urban scale assessment, energy behaviors and technological solutions, indoor environmental performance into building LCA, methodologies for retrofits strategies, phase change materialsbased systems in design and retrofitting strategies, renewable energy sources, optimized design, end-use behavior, etc. • Most refurbishments had lower life cycle carbon footprint than most new buildings. • However, preference was not concluded based on the current evidence and methodologies, and suggested for methodology development. • Further research was suggested to unify the protocol development for building life cycle carbon footprint analysis. • Analyzed the evidence for reducing carbon emission of buildings through prefabrication. • A total 27 case studies of prefabricated buildings were examined. • The study pointed out that about 3.2% of operational carbon reductions were achieved for prefabrication. • Further research was suggested on full life cycle of the buildings, nonresidential and steel-structured prefabricated buildings, benchmarking, etc.
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6. Adoption of circular economy principle in buildings It is evidence from this review that significant environmental impacts related to direct
5
waste generation for construction, refurbishments and demolition of the buildings that
6
have particularly been given less attention. In addition, ineffective use of non-renewable
7
materials could significantly cause natural resources depletion. For example, about 15%
8
of the total construction materials have gone to landfill annually due to over-ordering,
9
ordering incorrectly or damage due to poor storage (Barker, 2008). The reuse of such
10
materials as feedstock for other productions can reduce the waste disposal problem and 26
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1
the primary resource extraction, not to mention about the energy consumption and other
2
emissions arising from the secondary production (Martin et al., 2015). When there are resources scarcity and shortage in supply, industrial symbiosis plays a
4
significant role to lower the environmental impact and promote green economic growth ˗
5
i.e. the system can help link industrial development and carbon reduction (Pauliuk et al.,
6
2017). Therefore, resource productivity will be the key focus in the construction industry
7
in the near future. In this relation, CE can keep adding values in products for longer time
8
and virtually eliminate wastes (Smol et al., 2015). CE emphases on environmental
9
sustainability by transforming products by developing workable relationships between
10
ecological systems and economic growth (Nasir et al., 2017). However, several changes
11
are required throughout the value chains, from product design to new business and
12
market models, and from new ways of turning waste into a resource, as well as to new
13
modes of consumer behavior for transition to a CE (Smol et al., 2015).
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Developing guidelines for CE implementation and choosing CE indicators are still in
15
early stages and unclear. Therefore, Pauliuk (2018) proposed CE indicators shall be based
16
on LCA, material flow analysis (MFA) and material flow cost accounting. Another
17
theoretical framework being proposed is to discuss how industrial symbiosis with CE
18
could pursue sustainability by identifying the main collaboration aspects and performance
19
impacts (Herczeg et al., 2018). Meanwhile, a framework to integrate CE and eco-
20
innovations was proposed by de Jesus et al. (2018), and an empirically-based,
21
collaboration tool was proposed to enhance collaboration for CE in the building sector by
22
Leising et al. (2018).
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Few case-specific studies were also conducted in different sectors. For example,
24
Genovese et al. (2017) conducted a comparative case study on biodiesel production from
25
virgin and waste cooking oil using a linear and circular supply chain, and the study
26
showed that environmental gains was about 40% in terms of carbon emissions for the
27
latter approach.
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The traditional 3R concept (e.g., Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) follows ‘cradle-to-
29
grave’ approach, but the post-use stage and the existence of multiple generations was not
30
engaged, whereas the 6R concept (e.g., Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recovery,
31
Remanufacturing, and Redesign) follows ‘cradle-to-cradle (C2C)’ approach that 27
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established multi-generational, continuous and closed-loop system (Bradley et al., 2018;
2
Jawahir and Bradley, 2016). Dieterle et al. (2018) also highlighted that the cradle-to-
3
grave approach with the credits for substituted materials, is not fully suitable for
4
meaningful interpretation for CE setting. The study recognized that CE requires closing
5
material cycles, upcycling rather than downcycling, and increase responsibility of
6
producers. The study also suggests that C2C LCA approach should be better aligned with
7
CE settings. However, several challenges such as life cycle cost and implementation of
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new business model for adopting C2C as decision support are needed to address. To
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support, Niero and Olsen (2016) pointed out that close-loop system of aluminum can
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recycle has lower climate change impacts over the other recycling scenarios. In contrast,
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the use of mixed waste glass (post-consumed) as alternative cementitious materials in an
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open-loop circular approach can reduce the overall environmental impact in concrete
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production significantly (Deschamps et al., 2018).
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However, the feasibility of close-loop economy is still unknown. Therefore, the
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experts argued that LCA and life cycle costing should be used to evaluate the options for
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CE solutions in order to ensure the benefits in new product designs and increasing
17
recycling (Haupt and Zschokke, 2017). However, the loss of materials quantity/ quality
18
for their different uses can hindrance the adoption of LCA in CE principle. One of the
19
potential solution may be the use of substitution ratio when the recycling materials used
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in further processes based on their loss of quantity or quality. In addition, the risk of
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potential contamination of secondary materials should be modelled when adopting CE
22
principle (Haupt and Zschokke, 2017).
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For the purpose of supplying alternative materials from the secondary resources,
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recycle rate can be a good performance indicator for CE settings, as recycling rate (for
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both open and closed-loop recycling systems) can provide useful information in
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quantifying the circulated materials (Haupt et al., 2017).
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Elia et al. (2017) proposed a four-step framework for supporting assessment in CE
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setting, including identify (i) the processes to monitor, (ii) the activities to implement,
29
(iii) the requirements to measure (with the focus of single or multiple requirements such
30
as reducing input and use of natural resources, increasing share of renewable and
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recyclable resources, reducing valuable materials losses, and reducing emission), and (iv) 28
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the possible level of application, based on suitable methodology including material flow,
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energy flow, land-use, or LCA. Another conceptual framework was proposed for resource recovery from waste
4
within CE setting by Iacovidou et al. (2017) that includes (i) material flow analysis and
5
conceptual value assessment, (ii) metrics selection, (iii) scenario development, (iv)
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complex value assessment, evaluation and reflection, (v) detailed analysis and
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refinement, and (vi) final evaluation, and the assessment can be done using the input-
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output analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis and LCA.
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CE adoption in the construction industry is still in infancy stage, although a few
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frameworks and guidelines were proposed by some studies. For example, Smol et al.
11
(2015) reviewed the possible use of sewage sludge ash for the production of building
12
materials like cement, brick, ceramics, aggregates production, etc. in the light of adopting
13
CE concept in the construction industry. Pomponi and Moncaster (2017) reviewed the
14
adoption of CE in the built environment and suggested to apply the LCA and MFA tools
15
for implementation of CE. The study also proposed a six dimensional framework for
16
adopting the CE concept in building research, including environmental, societal,
17
economical, technological, behavioral and governmental aspects. Nasir et al. (2017)
18
compared the environmental impacts of two different types of building insulation
19
materials in the UK by integrating the circular supply chain. The results demonstrated
20
that insulation materials produced within a circular supply chain exhibited lower carbon
21
emissions compared to that following a linear supply chain. Adams et al. (2017)
22
conducted an online survey in the UK to establish the construction industry’s level of
23
awareness of CE, and pointed out several challenges, including a lack of incentive to
24
design for end-of-life issues for construction products, lack of market mechanisms, low
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value of recovered products, unclear financial case, fragmented supply chain, lack of
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interest, awareness and knowledge, lack of consideration for end-of-life during design
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and complexity of building.
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Moreover, Ghisellini et al. (2018) conducted a comprehensive review to examine
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whether the adoption of CE is environmentally and economically sustainable by focusing
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on construction and demolition sectors. The study mainly used LCA related papers in this
31
assessment, and found out several barriers of implementing CE in this sectors. The status, 29
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quantity and quality of building materials have to be known for effective implementation
2
of CE in buildings. Hence, a BIM based (early) design can help identify the materials
3
flow during the different stages of buildings (Akanbi et al., 2018), and LCA model
4
should be enhanced and included all processes from the CtC system boundary (Ghisellini
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et al., 2018; Russell-Smith et al., 2015, Russell-Smith and Lepech, 2015), for adopting
6
the CE principle in buildings.
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7. Discussion
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The aim of this study was to identify the research scope of buildings’ LCA by
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critically reviewing relevant literature. In addition to identify the knowledge gaps for
12
comprehensive assessment of buildings, the adoption of CE concept was highlighted.
13
Due to a wide variety of choices in selecting system boundary and other assumptions, the
14
LCA results may also significantly vary, and thus, building typology, scope of
15
assessment, system boundary and others assumptions should be mentioned when
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comparing the outcomes of different studies (Islam et al., 2015). This study considered
17
the important aspects when critically analyzing the selected case study papers (as shown
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in Table 2).
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It has already been mentioned that buildings’ LCA results could vary significantly
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among different studies due to the types of buildings, lifespan, system boundary,
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principal raw materials, etc. By considering the same system boundary (e.g. cradle-to-
22
grave), life time, building materials and functional unit, the average carbon emissions of
23
residential buildings was 4,306 kg CO2 eq/m2, which was significantly lower (about 30%)
24
than that of non-residential buildings (6,180 kg CO2 eq/m2) with the same assumptions,
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although the current research is mostly focusing on residential buildings. In comparison
26
to residential buildings constructed with concrete / reinforced concrete, about 25% lower
27
carbon emission was observed for residential buildings constructed with wood (Fig. 7).
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The results also varied significantly for buildings when compared to a cradle-to-gate
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system boundary (average 588 kg CO2 eq/m2). This is because of the collection of a huge
30
and variety of data to model a comprehensive assessment is not only time consuming, but
31
often difficult. However, several studies had also attempted to assess the carbon emission 30
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of whole building by considering different stages, but they still excluded the renovation
2
and end-of-life waste treatment (Peng, 2016). Recent reviews also concluded that the
3
operation and end-of-life stages have been overlooked in many LCA studies related to
4
building assessment (Anand and Amor, 2017; De Wolf et al., 2017). The typology of buildings may vary widely from region to region, due to the
6
availability of raw materials, climate, tradition and so on. The key variables are building
7
envelope (i.e. floor, wall and roof assemblages), building height (low-rise to high-rise),
8
lifespan, etc. (Islam et al., 2015), and thus, the LCA results can exhibit a significant
9
variation. The results may even be very different in the same regions due to different
10
considerations. For example, about a difference of 22% in carbon emissions was found
11
between two studies conducted by Gan et al. (2017) and Dong and Ng (2015) for
12
reinforced concrete high-rise buildings in Hong Kong due to the choice of different
13
upstream database (Ecoinvent and USLCI, and secondary sources, respectively). Even
14
with the same system boundary, LCA results could vary among different studies too. For
15
instance, 497-637 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Hong Kong (Gan et al., 2017; Dong and Ng, 2015),
16
757-1,022 kg CO2 eq/m2 in China (Hong et al., 2015; Su and Zhang, 2016), 477 kg CO2
17
eq/m2 in South Korea (Roh et al., 2017), 509-524 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Australia and UK
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(Sandanayake et al., 2018a,b), when a cradle-to-gate system boundary was considered.
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In addition, the environmental impacts of buildings can vary significantly among the
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studies depending on the regions or countries (Cabeza et al., 2014; De Wolf et al., 2017).
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Therefore, developing the local or regional benchmarks is essential for setting up future
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mitigation goals to compare past and present performance, industry average or best
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practice (Peng, 2016).
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LCI data quality in LCA studies on buildings is also a great concern. Because the
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quality of LCI data may affect the accuracy and validity of studies. Therefore, Europe,
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USA, and Australia are striving for local / regional LCI database development (Islam et
27
al., 2015). In recent years, China is also devoting some though insignificant efforts in LCI
28
database development. However, the verification and validation of such data are
29
necessary to ensure data quality (Anand and Amor, 2017). The LCI data availability can
30
greatly influence the results of LCA study (Dixit, 2017). Data availability during different
31
stages of life cycle of buildings may hinder the performance of a full LCA. This is 31
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because buildings are more complicated than a single product with comparatively long
2
life and multiple functions, and would often undergo to various changes (Chau et al.,
3
2015). In addition, the lack of benchmarks would make it difficult to adopt a mandatory
4
LCA assessment for buildings by various stakeholders. Moreover, many studies were
5
only related to the assessment of one or two impact indicators, mostly carbon and energy
6
assessment. It is difficult to make a trade off with one or two impact indicators for such a
7
complex system. Carbon emissions act as a relatively good indicator for building
8
assessment, but the majority of different impacts should be assessed with high coverage
9
of LCI. Data representativeness is another key issue affecting quality of building
10
assessment (Dixit, 2017), especially due to the lack temporal representation and outdated
11
data. For example, Ecoinvent database, USLCI and other secondary sources were used
12
for upstream processes in most of the building assessment in Hong Kong (Gan et al.,
13
2017; Dong and Ng, 2015), which could seriously affect the quality of results, and thus
14
demands further research using local data. In addition, many materials (e.g. non-
15
structural materials) and building systems (e.g. construction process, refurbishment
16
process, etc.) are often excluded from buildings’ LCA, which are in fact of significant
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contributes in many impact categories (Heinonen et al., 2016).
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Most of the studies excluded waste management during the construction and
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renovation stages (Table 2) even some had selected a cradle-to-grave system boundary
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(e.g. Guo et al., 2017; Hoxha et al., 2017). Some studies completely skipped waste
21
management in their studies (Lewandowska et al., 2015; Atmaca, 2016a). Only few
22
studies considered waste management during the construction stage, for example,
23
Dahlstrøm et al. (2012), but did not consider during the operational stage (e.g.,
24
renovation). Only a few studies thought about the impact assessment for refurbishments
25
and thus considered waste management for this only (e.g. Ghose et al., 2017; Rodrigues
26
et al., 2018). However, as building construction is now shifting from a linear to circular
27
paradigm, the consideration of those factors are essential for ensuring waste reduction,
28
resources recovery and resource-efficient construction, not to mention about increasing
29
the accuracy of such assessment, as well as for adopting the CE principle in the building
30
industry.
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Sustainability assessment cannot be fully evaluated without considering the economic
2
and social aspects, and most of the studies did not take those aspects into account (Chau
3
et al., 2015), and thus the adoption of CE principle in buildings would be the way
4
forward for comprehensive assessment, as environmental, social, economic, business and
5
policy aspects were already integrated with the proposed CE framework as demonstrated
6
in some studies (Nasir et al., 2017Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017;).
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CE is a relatively new model that promotes the maximum reuse / recycling of
8
materials and components in order to reduce waste generation to the largest possible
9
extent (Ghisellini et al., 2018). However, several challenges pertinent to the CE concept
10
towards environmental sustainability, including the definition of CE system boundaries,
11
challenges in the governance and management, inter-organizational and inter-sectoral
12
material and energy flows, etc. (Korhonen et al., 2018). In addition, several value chains
13
including manufacturing, distribution, sales and system changes are rarely involved in CE
14
currently (Kalmykova et al., 2017). CE also necessitates a systemic shift due to the
15
different concepts and understanding by integrating the economic prosperity and
16
environmental quality and its impacts on social equity and future generations (Kirchherr
17
et al., 2017). More scientific research on assessing the actual environmental impacts of
18
CE are suggested for effective implementation of the CE concept to various sectors, as
19
CE can influence sustainability, business model and innovation systems (Geissdoerfer et
20
al., 2017; Korhonen et al., 2018; Manninen et al., 2018). CE in the building sectors
21
should be adopted by considering the above-mentioned shortcomings and challenges in
22
order to appropriately selecting the system boundary and assessment tools during the
23
early stages of design, as the decisions at this stage can influence the overall
24
environmental performance of buildings significantly (Gervásio et al., 2014).
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Based on the above analysis, several major areas on further research related to
26
building LCA and CE adoption in buildings are highlighted. First, a comprehensive
27
assessment of buildings by including cradle-to-grave / C2C system boundary is scarce,
28
and thus, should be considered in future assessment with a special focus on the LCI data
29
quality (local / regional or case specific LCI data is preferred for more accurate
30
assessment). In addition, the assessment should include multiple impact categories, as
31
currently only about 60% of the studies were based on single impact. Second, material 33
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wastage during construction and waste generation during renovation and the end-of-life
2
of building should be critically considered in future studies, as currently about 69% of the
3
studies failed to consider waste management and recovery in their assessment, despite
4
27% of the studies took into account the end-of-life waste treatment. Third, a
5
comprehensive assessment by including non-structural materials (rather than the principal
6
materials only) is scarce, and hence, more attention on that should be put in place as some
7
studies highlighted that non-structural materials can significantly mislead the overall
8
results, especially in some of the indicators. Finally, it is found that studies regarding CE
9
adoption in building LCA is sparse and at the early stage of development. In addition to
10
the methodological rigor, case studies with effective implementation of CE concept are
11
recommended. Both open and close-looped recycling systems should be adopted using
12
recycling rate as the performance indicator to promote greater adoption of CE in the
13
building sector. For example, concrete waste can be in the line with the close-looped
14
recycling system, whereas steel, glass, wood, etc. can be analogous to the open-looped
15
upcycling system. In addition, the environmental and economic impacts of resource
16
recovery and upcycling can be assessed using LCA (C2C approach) based on MFA. In
17
the assessment, substitution ratio can be used for the close-looped system, whereas
18
replacement co-efficient (by considering the quality and market availability of the
19
materials) can be adopted for the open-looped system. More importantly, the challenges
20
identified by various mentioned studies should point to an effective implementation of
21
the CE principle in building. The extensive review of this study regarding the building
22
LCA shows that most of the studies have not considered materials flow and waste
23
treatment (recycling and disposal) critically at different stages of building, and thus, it is
24
suggested to take resource recovery into account when performing building LCA under
25
the CE context. This will help increase the accuracy of the assessment through the
26
identification of the potential in resource recovery, and ultimately save valuable natural
27
resources.
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Based on the findings of this study, different considerations and existing practices
29
associated with the selected case study papers (Tables 1-2) and implications of the
30
selected review papers (Table 3), a framework for further enhancement of buildings
34
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sustainability by extending the scope of research and adoption of the CE principle is
2
developed as shown in Fig. 9.
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Fig. 9. Framework further enhancement of buildings’ LCA research integrated with CE adoption.
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8. Conclusions Buildings are considered as a complex system, and hence, careful selection of
3
different considerations and assumptions in terms of different stages of buildings,
4
methodology and LCI data, other aspects beyond LCA is necessary for the
5
comprehensiveness of assessment. Based on this review, several conclusions can be
6
drawn and recommendations can be provided accordingly.
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About 40% of the studies used single impact indicator (and only one-third of the
8
studies used multiple indicators) as the selection of impact category is very open and is
9
subject to individual preference or perhaps due to lack of detailed data for comprehensive
10
assessment. Only 45% of the studies took a cradle-to-grave system boundary into their
11
assessment. This may be due to the limited data for building operation, use and
12
renovation, and the end-of-life. Therefore, other aspects beyond carbon and energy
13
consumption should be assessed according to a cradle-to-grave / cradle-to-cradle system
14
boundary in future studies to improve the comprehensiveness.
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More than 60% of the existing LCA studies focused on residential buildings.
16
However, the average carbon emissions of residential buildings was 4,306 kg CO2 eq/m2
17
which about 30% lower than that of non-residential buildings (6,180 kg CO2 eq/m2)
18
under the same considerations. Therefore, future studies should be directed to non-
19
residential buildings.
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Environmental impacts significantly vary depending upon the regions or countries.
21
For example, 497-637 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Hong Kong, 757-1,022 kg CO2 eq/m2 in China,
22
509-524 kg CO2 eq/m2 in Australia and UK based on a cradle-to-gate system boundary,
23
and thus, developing local or regional benchmarks is essential for comparing the
24
performance. In addition, the selection of upstream database may significantly mislead
25
the results of assessment. For example, a difference of about 22% was found due to the
26
selection of different databases in those Hong Kong case studies. Therefore, local /
27
regional LCI should be preferentially developed and used in the assessment.
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About 69% of the studies did not consider waste management at all, while 1%, 3%
29
and 27% studies considered wastage only at the construction, renovation (focusing on
30
building renovation only), and the end-of-life stages of buildings, respectively. As
31
buildings are now shifting from a linear to circular paradigm, resource recovery and 36
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resource-efficient construction within the CE concept should be practiced in the building
2
industry for comprehensive assessment and to enhance the sustainability performance. In addition, very few (and partly) CE related building (including construction) LCA
4
studies are found at present. However, some fundamental studies focusing on the scope,
5
indicators, boundary and case studies of CE are found. Based on these studies, C2C LCA
6
approach by integrating the CE settings into building through both open and close-looped
7
recycling systems and by referring to the recycling rate as a performance indicator due to
8
its complexity and long life span. LCA, MFA and design tools can be integrated to
9
facilitate the implementation of CE, where the design tools can be used to identify the
10
material flow during different stages of building, and the environmental impacts can be
11
assessed by LCA based on MFA. In addition, greater industry involvement by inviting
12
relevant stakeholders to participate in the assessment is necessary in order to enhance the
13
practical application and decision support processes.
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Literature related to building-environmental research was critically analyzed.
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LCA implication on buildings was comprehensively reviewed by discussing the contemporary issues. Selected papers were critically analyzed to unveil the research trends and practices.
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Knowledge gaps for comprehensive assessment of buildings under the CE principle are identified. Comprehensive
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