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International Journal of Sustainable Building

Technology and Urban Development
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A comparative review of existing data and

methodologies for calculating embodied energy and
carbon of buildings
a b
A. M. Moncaster & J-Y. Song
a
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
b
School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
Published online: 28 May 2012.

To cite this article: A. M. Moncaster & J-Y. Song (2012) A comparative review of existing data and methodologies for
calculating embodied energy and carbon of buildings, International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban
Development, 3:1, 26-36, DOI: 10.1080/2093761X.2012.673915

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 International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development
Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2012, 26–36

A comparative review of existing data and methodologies for calculating embodied energy and
carbon of buildings
A.M. Moncastera* and J-Y. Songb
a
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; bSchool of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton,
Brighton, UK
(Received 4 January 2012; final version received 23 February 2012)

Extended abstract
In the Climate Change Act of 2008 the UK Government pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. As one step
towards this, regulations are being introduced requiring all new buildings to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2019. These are defined as
buildings which emit net zero carbon during their operational lifetime. However, in order to meet the 80% target it is necessary
to reduce the carbon emitted during the whole life-cycle of buildings, including that emitted during the manufacture of
materials and components, and during the processes of construction, refurbishment and demolition. These elements make up
Downloaded by [Princeton University] at 12:14 22 September 2013

the ‘embodied carbon’ of the building. This paper reviews the existing European and UK standards, methodologies, databases
and software tools for the estimation of embodied energy and carbon of buildings.
While there is currently no legislation requiring the calculation of embodied energy in buildings, voluntary standards are
being developed by the European Committee for Standardisation Technical Committee 350 (CEN/TC 350). Based on BS EN
ISO 14040 and BS EN ISO 14044, these define a four stage process-based life cycle assessment method to calculate the
embodied energy in construction, with a compulsory ‘product’ stage and optional further stages for ‘construction’, ‘use’ and
‘end of life’. A further voluntary specification for the assessment of the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and
services, PAS2050, was introduced in the UK in 2008. It too uses a process-based assessment the environmental impact of a
building calculated through this method can therefore be seen as the sum of the environmental impacts of the products and
processes that have created the building.
Other Life Cycle Assessment methodologies have been developed in this area, including input-output (I-O) and hybrids of
process and input-output. The environmental impact of a building defined by an input-output based assessment in contrast to
that by a process-based method, is seen as a proportion of the total impacts of the different economic sectors which have
created the building. The I-O approach therefore inherently assigns responsibility for environmental impacts to a particular
industrial sector. Process-based methods are more specific to the construction product, and more accurate within the limited
boundaries used. However they omit the supporting services necessary for construction, including finance, insurance,
government and organisational administration and all related office buildings. While I-O assessment overcomes the problems
with process assessment by considering a complete system boundary, the assumptions of homogeneity and proportionality in
particular limit its use for comparison of impacts from individual products. For the purposes of designing a low embodied
energy building, the I-O approach is too broad-brushed and generic to be helpful. The hybrid approaches attempt to overcome
the limitations of both the process and the I-O methods.
There is some existing embodied carbon and embodied energy data. However, due to the lack of current regulations and the
inherent complexity and diversity of the area, the available data are varied in scope and application. There are three main
sources of data:

(1) There are several databases which include embodied energy and carbon of standard building materials and components.
Some of these are construction sector-specific, while others contain more general product data. These provide data for
the ‘cradle to factory gate’ phase of the embodied energy. Manufacturers are also starting to develop their own
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) which include this data, and several of these are publicly available.
(2) Both commercial and in-house software tools have been developed to calculate whole life-cycle embodied energy for
buildings and infrastructure projects. This is known as ‘cradle to grave’ assessment.
(3) Detailed life cycle assessments of specific buildings, including housing developments and individual dwellings, have
also been carried out by academic researchers.
A review of the research literature shows a wide range for the calculated embodied energy. This range in reported figures is due
to the use of diverse product data arrived at through different LCA methodologies, different boundaries and often for specific
manufacturers, which are therefore non-comparable; different calculation methodologies for the LCA of the whole building; and
different building construction and designs. Perhaps most crucially, in spite of the likelihood of an underestimation by current
analysis methods, the results show that embodied energy and carbon of buildings can be a very significant absolute value, as well
as an increasingly high proportion of the whole life energy and carbon.
The existing databases and much of the literature provide data for the product stage (stage 1) of the process – that is for the

*Corresponding author. Email: amm24@cam.ac.uk

ISSN 2093-761X print/ISSN 2093-7628 online
q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2093761X.2012.673915
http://www.tandfonline.com
 International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development 27

embodied energy and carbon in the building materials. However there is less, very limited, data available for composite
components such as windows, for services components and for innovative materials and products. There is also a particular
shortage of data across the construction sector in the energy used and carbon emitted during transport to site (part of stage 1 in
prEN 15804), stages 2 (construction), 3 (in use) and 4 (end of life). The commercial and in-house analysis tools also vary in the
databases they use, in their LCA methods and in the boundaries assumed in analysis.
Taking each of the missing calculations in turn, the calculation of the reduced impacts of transport to site of local construction
materials will inform and support the European standard BS EN 15643 parts 3 and 4, which considers the social and economic
sustainability of construction works.
Some construction projects last for several years and have hundreds of workers on site carrying out energy intensive activities.
The accurate prediction of energy use and carbon emissions during standard site operations for stage 2 of the life cycle is
therefore a fundamental part of the calculation for whole life embodied energy. Separately the development of off-site
construction systems has been heralded as a ‘sustainable’ solution; this can only be verified with the development of an accurate
‘carbon costing’ method for both on-site and off-site construction activities, enabling the accurate comparison of different
techniques and materials. Furthermore there is a lack of general data on the carbon and energy savings to be made by site
management operations such as reuse of subgrade rather than the import of new materials.
While ongoing maintenance and repair can be considered as part of the operational energy requirements, as suggested by the
Strategic Forum for Construction (SFfC) [15], the impacts of major retrofit and refurbishment works form part of stage 3 of the
whole life embodied impacts of a building. A clear understanding of the service life of individual components is necessary for
these to be calculated.
Finally there is limited data on the energy used by demolition, reuse and recycling processes at the end of life of a building.
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While these may be less important for building types with a long expected lifetime such as UK housing, it is a key element of
short expected lifespans such as stadia, where design approaches are often required to consider deconstruction and reuse of
components.
In conclusion, it is essential to measure the whole life embodied energy and carbon of buildings, as well as their operational
energy and carbon emissions. The comprehensive development of a robust methodology, and a deeper understanding of its
limitations, is a necessary prerequisite for this. Various initiatives to develop and collate data and tools and make them freely
available are still in their infancy, and these should be encouraged by the construction industry. It is hoped that the forthcoming
standardisation of EPDs should ensure that all manufacturers produce equivalent information for their products within a few
years. However the diversity of products used within construction will mean that the LCA of individual buildings will remain
complex.
This review will guide the future development of a consistent and transparent database and software tool to calculate the
embodied energy and carbon of buildings within the specific context of the UK. The research is being carried out as part of a
project led by BLP Insurance, and with the support of the Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC).

Abstract
In the Climate Change Act of 2008 the UK Government pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. As one step
towards this, regulations are being introduced requiring all new buildings to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2019. These are defined as
buildings which emit net zero carbon during their operational lifetime. However, in order to meet the 80% target it is necessary
to reduce the carbon emitted during the whole life-cycle of buildings, including that emitted during the processes of
construction. These elements make up the ‘embodied carbon’ of the building. While there are no regulations yet in place to
restrict embodied carbon, a number of different approaches have been made. There are several existing databases of embodied
carbon and embodied energy. Most provide data for the material extraction and manufacturing only, the ‘cradle to factory gate’
phase. In addition to the databases, various software tools have been developed to calculate embodied energy and carbon of
individual buildings. A third source of data comes from the research literature, in which individual life cycle analyses of
buildings are reported. This paper provides a comprehensive review, comparing and assessing data sources, boundaries and
methodologies. The paper concludes that the wide variations in these aspects produce incomparable results. It highlights the
areas where existing data is reliable, and where new data and more precise methods are needed. This comprehensive review
will guide the future development of a consistent and transparent database and software tool to calculate the embodied energy
and carbon of buildings.

Keywords: embodied energy; embodied carbon; life-cycle assessment; sustainable building; sustainable construction;
building energy assessment

1. Introduction by at least 34% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050 [2]. The

Evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) [1] shows that the emission of greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide, the bulk of which come from
the burning of fossil fuels for energy, is leading to global
warming. This will have huge environmental, social and
economic consequences during the coming century. The
UK government has set a target to reduce carbon emissions
building sector is a major contributor to carbon emissions
in the UK, accounting for about 50% of the total [3].
Recent UK and European policy, including the Energy
Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), has focused
on reducing the energy used and carbon emitted during the
period of operation of buildings [4]. UK policy requires all
new homes to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2016 and non-domestic
 28 A.M. Moncaster and J-Y. Song
buildings by 2019, defined as zero net carbon emissions
during their operational lifetime [5,6]. The policy
encourages greater energy efficiency of the design
enabling lower energy use by occupiers (particularly in
heating and lighting), and the provision of on- or off-site
renewable energy sources to provide the remaining energy
needs.
However, the energy use during the operation of the
building is only part of the story. Energy is also used
during the manufacture of the building materials and
components, in transporting these to site, and during the
construction process itself. This energy is known as the
embodied energy of the building. Embodied energy can
further include the energy needed for refurbishment and
replacement of components during the lifetime of the
building and that used in the demolition, waste and
reprocessing at the end of life stage. It is apparent therefore
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that to make effective and real-time reductions in energy
use and carbon emissions of buildings the whole life
(embodied and operational) energy use and carbon
emissions should be calculated. This, with the need for
a standardised and industry-recognised methodology,
formed the first two recommendations of the final report
of the Innovation and Growth Team reporting to the UK
Government in December 2010 [7], supported by the
Government’s response in June 2011 [8].
This paper reviews the existing methodologies,
databases and software tools for the estimation of embodied
energy and carbon of buildings, comparing and assessing
data sources, boundaries and methodologies. The paper
asks which data exists in a reliable form and emanates from
clear and comparable methodologies, and considers where
new data and more precise methodology are needed.
2. Standards and methodologies
2.1 Standards
The measurement and reduction of embodied energy in
buildings is not a legislated requirement of the EU or UK
policy framework at present. However, European stan-
dards have been developed by the European Committee
for Standardisation Technical Committee 350 (CEN/TC
350) to look at the sustainability of construction works
(environmental, social and economic), and the calculation
method for the whole life performance of buildings.
Developed from this work, BS EN 15643-2 Sustainability
of Construction Works – Assessment of Buildings, (pt 2)
Framework for the assessment of environmental perform-
ance was published in the UK in March 2011, followed by
BS EN 15978 Sustainability of construction works –
Assessment of environmental performance of buildings —
Calculation method in November 2011.
For methodology, both standards refer to the
International Organization for Standardization standards
ISO 14040:2006 Environmental management – Life cycle
assessment – Principles and framework and ISO
14044:2006 Environmental management – Life cycle
assessment – Requirements and guideline. Further
specific requirements for construction products are
given in ISO FDIS 21930 Sustainability in building
construction – Environmental declaration of construction
products. These international standards define four key
phases of life cycle assessment.
A further European standard under approval is prEN
15804 Sustainability of construction works – Environ-
mental product declarations – Product category rules.
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are defined as
a Type III declaration by ISO 14020:2000, Environmental
Labels and Declarations. The content of EPDs includes
details of the manufacturer plus data on the environmental
assessment of the product. The declared environmental
impacts include amongst other aspects the energy used, the
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted, and
the percentage waste. While EPDs have already been
developed by a few manufacturers, these are highly
variable in scope and format and cover only a few of the
products in use in construction.
Life Cycle Assessment, the method prescribed by
these standards, has been widely recognised by prac-
titioners and researchers as a useful tool to assess buildings
since 1990, and has been actively applied to both the
financial and the environmental assessment of buildings
[9]. However, although its usefulness is widely recognised
[10], the LCA of buildings is still relatively less developed
compared with other sectors, due to their complexity and
variability. Unlike goods manufactured in batches as part
of a uniform process within a carefully controlled
environment, most buildings are still built on site under
particular environmental conditions and by a diverse
group of organisations and individuals. They are formed of
numerous components, products and processes, with the
involvement of many different stakeholders ensuring that
each one is unique [11].
A further standard published in October 2008 by the UK
National Standards Body, British Standards Institute (BSI)
is the Publicly Available Specification PAS2050: 2008
Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse
gas emissions of goods and services. Building on BS EN
ISO 14040 and 14044, the standard specifies requirements
for the assessment of the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions of goods and services, considering emission
sources, system boundaries, calculations of greenhouse gas
emissions and publication of data.
2.2 Methods of life cycle assessment
There are three main methods used for the Life Cycle
Inventory (LCI) phase of Life Cycle Assessment
 International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development 29

(Figure 1), including process, input-output (I-O) and processes, as well as on-site waste. The use stage includes
hybrid methods. The LCA methodology proposed by the the impacts of operation of the product during the lifetime
European and International Standards is a process-based of the building, the impacts of the maintenance, repair,
assessment as shown in Figure 2, which calculates the replacement and refurbishment of components, and
embodied energy by considering the building process in associated treatment of waste, during the lifetime of the
four stages, with only the first, the product stage, being building. The end of life stage includes impacts associated
recommended as mandatory. The product stage includes with deconstruction and demolition, transport, disposal
the resource input to the product including raw materials, and waste processing. Potential positive impacts from
the transport between processes, and the impacts of the reuse and recycling after the end of life are shown in the
manufacture process. For construction products a further final phase. Treloar [12] describes the four repeating steps
three additional (currently optional) phases during the of the process assessment as:
building life cycle can be included, as shown in Figure 2, (1) measurement of the direct energy requirements of the
with a fifth additional stage looking at impacts outside the process;
building life cycle. The construction stage includes the (2) measurement of the output of the process;
transport from the production gate to construction site of (3) quantification of the products required directly by the
the product, and the construction and installation process; and
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(4) the application of steps 1 and 3 to the products

quantified in step 3, and so forth.
Step 3 in a process assessment for a building may
therefore be developed from ‘bills of quantities’, giving
quantities of materials and components required for each
element of the building. Each of these products will then
be subject to its own life cycle assessment as ‘downstream’
to the building. If the process is ‘a building’, then to
calculate the impact of the building each product and
process which forms the building must be assessed. In turn,
for each building product, each of the products and
processes which form it must be assessed, and so on. There
are two main problems with this method. Firstly the data
Figure 1. Life-cycle assessment framework defined by EN ISO for energy used in manufacturing products is highly
14044:2006, Environmental management — Life cycle unreliable, as it depends on industry stability, uniformity
assessment — Requirements and guidelines. and compliance. Secondly the upstream services necessary

Building assessment information

Building life cycle information Supplementary

information beyond the
building life cycle
A1-3 A4-5 B1-7 C1-4
CONSTRUCTION USE stage END OF LIFE stage D
PRODUCT stage
PROCESS stage
Benefits and loads
A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 C1 C2 C3 C4 beyond the system
boundary
De-construction demolition
Refurbishment
Raw material supply

installation process

Replacement
Maintenance

Reuse-
Manufacturing

Construction-

Waste processing
Repair

Recovery-
Use
Transport

Transport

Recycling-
Transport

Disposal

B6 Operational energy use

B7 Operational water use

Figure 2. Display of modular information for the different stages of the building assessment, BS EN 15978:2011Sustainability of
construction works — Assessment of environmental performance of buildings — Calculation method.
 30 A.M. Moncaster and J-Y. Song
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Figure 3. Scope categorisation of processes across the construction project physical boundary, Strategic Forum for Construction &
Carbon Trust (2010) [15].
for the construction of the building, including the
associated industry support services of finance, insurance,
and government administration, and the related office
buildings from the construction and the services sectors,
are usually omitted from the model. Both of these require
responsible reporting of environmental impacts by a great
number of different organisations in different industry
sectors.
An alternative model is the input-output life cycle
assessment. First developed by Wassily Leontief in the
1930s, in the 1970s he suggested its application to
environmental impact assessment [13]. Countries calcu-
late gross domestic product (GDP) and now carbon
emissions by economic sectors; by considering the inputs
and outputs from and to other sectors, the input-output
model can calculate the total impact of construction,
including the areas omitted by the process LCA. The
method also implies sectoral responsibility for energy use
and carbon emissions.
This approach has been followed in the UK by
the Strategic Forum for Construction (SFfC). In 2008 the
SFfC and the UK Government jointly published the
Strategy for Sustainable Construction [14], under which the
SFfC is made responsible for delivering a 15% reduction in
carbon emissions from construction processes and associ-
ated transport compared to 2008 levels, by 2012. A paper
defining the scope and interim stages necessary to achieve
this target was written by the SFfC and the Carbon Trust, in
association with Arup, and revised in March 2010 [15]. The
report limits the responsibilities of the construction sector at
this stage to the construction process itself, major
maintenance and refurbishment, and deconstruction (see
Figure 3). Thus it excludes the manufacture of building
materials and components, but includes their transport to
site, with reasons given for this including ‘the lack of
complete and consistent data’ (page 15). It also excludes the
energy used during normal operation of the building.
While I-O analysis overcomes the problems with
process analysis by considering a complete system
boundary, and by inherently assigning responsibility to
an industrial sector, the assumptions of homogeneity and
proportionality in particular limit its use for comparison of
impacts from individual products. For the purposes of
designing a low embodied energy building, the I-O
approach is too broad-brushed and generic to be helpful.
Therefore a hybrid methodology has been developed by
Treloar [12] and Crawford [16]. Their ‘hybrid input-output
method’ attempts to overcome problems with both of the
other methods by conducting both an I-O analysis and a
process analysis, and then replacing the elements of the
I-O analysis which are accounted for more accurately by
the process analysis.
The environmental impact of a building defined by a
process based analysis can therefore be seen as the sum of
 International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development 31

LCI method

put econ-

put econ-
the environmental impacts of the products and processes

Input-out-

Input-out-
Process-

Process-

Process-
that have created the building. The environmental impact

method

method

method

model

model
based

based

based

omic

omic
of a building defined by an input-output based analysis, on
the other hand, is seen as a proportion of the impacts of the
different economic sectors which have created the

Cradle-to-gate and
building.

Cradle-to-grave

Cradle-to-grave
Cradle-to-gate

Cradle-to-gate

Cradle-to-gate
Boundary
3. Data, databases and calculation tools

Licensed

Licensed

Licensed
access**
3.1 Data and databases

access*
Access

access

access

access
Open
Open
Data for individual products are published by some
manufacturers in the form of EPDs and these are often

General products and processes including energy, transport, building

General products and processes including materials, transport, energy and

General energy and material flows into and out of the environment that are
associated with producing a material, component, or assembly, U.S. data
materials, chemicals, washing agents, paper & board, agriculture, waste
publicly available. There are also some initiatives to
develop new EPDs, and collate and publish existing ones,
such as the CAP’EM (Cycle Assessment Procedure for
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Eco-Materials) Project, a North-West European pro-

gramme which is developing LCAs for 100 building
materials [17].

General products and processes, International data

Current public and commercial databases used for the

General products and processes, European data

assessment of embodied energy and carbon are reviewed
in Tables 1 and 2. Most of these provide the data for the
cradle-to-gate stage of the whole life-cycle of buildings

waste treatments, Mostly Dutch data

that is, product stage only. The Bath Inventory of Carbon
and Energy (ICE) and Athena databases are derived using
a process-based assessment method for the data calcu- management, International data
lation [18] whereas the New Zealand building material
database uses a hybrid approach of both process and input-
output analysis [19,20].
Data coverage

There are currently several databases that give

assessments of the embodied energy and carbon of
products and processes that make up buildings. General
databases include the General Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI),
Swiss Ecoinvent, German GaBi, Dutch IVAM, European
PE International GmbH (Initially developed by

Life Cycle Database (ELCD) and US LCI (Table 1). There National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
are also buildings- or construction-specific databases
concentrating on the building and construction sector
the University of Stuttgart, Germany)

(Table 2). These often include data that are more suitable
IVAM Environmental Research,

for the building assessment since they are developed

particularly for the building sector. These include the
EU Joint Research Centre

Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) developed at Bath

Ecoinvent centre, Swiss

University for UK specific data, the Canadian Athena,

and its partners, US

** Open access: Publicly available free of charge

General-purpose databases.

New Zealand building material embodied energy database

The Netherlands

* Licensed access: Charge fees for the data use

and Australian building products LCI. While some public

Developer

databases provide free access many require commercial-

level fees.
There are clear complexities and inherent inaccuracies
in the methodologies for calculating embodied energy and
European Life Cycle

carbon of buildings, as described in the section above. The

Database (ELCD)

IVAM LCA data

data available are therefore limited in their scope and their

GaBi database

equivalence. A comprehensive review by Dixit et al. [21]

Ecoinvent

deduces 10 parameters which cause variations in

Table 1.
Database

US LCI

embodied energy data for building products, which are

reproduced in Table 3.
 32 A.M. Moncaster and J-Y. Song

Process-based hybrid
Table 3. Parameters which cause variations in embodied energy
data, after Dixit et al. (2010) [21].

analysis method
Process-based

Process-based

Process-based
Parameter

LCI method
1. System boundaries 2. Method of EE analysis

method

method

method
3. Geographic location 4. Primary and delivered energy
5. Age of data 6. Data source
7. Completeness of data 8. Manufacturing technology
9. Feedstock energy
Cradle to
Boundary

to-gate*
Cradle-

Cradle-

Cradle-
consideration 10. Temporal representation

to-gate

to-gate
grave

* The Athena database claims to have the cradle-to-grave phase data; however the data does not consider some stages of the whole life-cycle such as construction footprint and demolition
3.2 Calculation tools
Licensed
Access

access

access

access

access In addition to the databases, a number of software tools

Open

Open

Open

have been developed in the LCA and building assessment

area. These are often linked to databases and vice versa.
Building and construction materials and products, Building
product maintenance and replacement life data, Australian data

Well-known LCA software includes SimaPro and Gabi

Building materials and products, North American centred data

developed by PRé Consultants in the Netherlands and PE

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International based in Germany respectively. These are

Construction and building materials, Mostly UK data

general products and processes LCA tools, occasionally

including building materials (Table 4). The general-
purpose LCA software tools can be used for the calculation
of the embodied energy and carbon in buildings. However,
their data and calculation often do not cover the whole life-
Building materials, New Zealand data

cycle of buildings thus, only partial estimation is possible.

General-purpose LCA software tools in Table 4
calculate the cradle-to-grave assessment of materials and
products. The construction footprint and demolition of
buildings are again left out in their calculation. Among
building-specific LCA software in Table 5, the Carbon
Calculator by the UK Environment Agency includes the
Data coverage

construction site energy use and waste management in the

calculation. There is also some commercial software that
includes these elements in calculating the embodied
energy and carbon of buildings. However, the scope of
data considered over the life-cycle of buildings varies.
Recently some building-specific calculation software
Building Product Inno-

Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand
vation Council, Australia
Athena Institute, Canada

has been developed. Athena’s Impact Estimator, US NIST

(National Institute of Standards and Technology)’s BEES
Bath University, UK

(Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainabil-

ity), and the Carbon Calculator of the UK Environment
Agency are examples (Table 5). Much of the UK building-
Developer

specific calculation software uses the Bath ICE as a base

Construction-specific databases.

data source together with other additional data. Some

software use not only UK specific data but also general
product data from outside the UK. The Swiss Ecoinvent
Inventory of Carbon & Energy

New Zealand building materials

Building Products Life Cycle

building material data is often used to fill the gaps of the

Bath ICE data.
embodied energy database
Inventory (BP LCI)
Athena database

3.3 Published LCA results of buildings

A number of academic papers have been published which
Database

consider the LCA of individual buildings [22 – 25].

Table 2.

(ICE)

A thorough review of these is outside the scope of this

paper but particularly useful recent reviews include those
 International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development 33

Table 4. General-purpose LCA software.

Software Developer Data used in software Calculation Copyright

SimaPro PRé Consultants, Ecoinvent, US LCI, Danish Products LCA Commercial
The Netherlands input-output database,
Dutch
input-output database,
LCA food database,
Industry data
(Optional: Japanese
input-output and
IVAM database)
GaBi PE international, PE in-house database, Products LCA Commercial
based in ELCD,
Germany Plastics Europe data
Boustead Model Boustead consulting Boustead in-house Products LCA Commercial
Limited, UK database
Umberto Carbon ifu (Institute for Environmental Ecoinvent Products and corporate carbon Commercial
Footprint Informatics) Hamburg, footprint
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Germany
REGIS Sinum AG, Swiss Ecoinvent Products LCA, corporate eco Commercial
performance, LCI modelling
CES eco selector Granta Design Ltd., UK Granta in-house database Energy usage and carbon Commercial
footprint of products and
processes

Table 5. Construction-specific LCA software.

Software Developer Default data used in software Calculation Copyright

Athena Athena Institute, Athena’s in-house datasets, US LCA for common building assem- Free of
EcoCalculator Canada Life Cycle Inventory blies (Limited to North American charge with
cases) registration
BEES (Building for National Institute In-house database LCA and LCC for building products Free access
Environmental and of Standards and (online ver-
Economic Sustain- Technology sion)
ability) (NIST), US
Carbon Calculator Environment Bath ICE v.1.6a, Jakobs UK in- Embodied carbon of materials used in Free access
Agency, UK house calculation, Defra civil construction works, transpor-
(2009)’s greenhouse conver- tation, site energy use and waste
sion factors management
DEMScot model Cambridge Archi- Bath ICE v. 1.6a for the Both operational and embodied Free access
tectural Research embodied energy and carbon greenhouse gas emissions for Scottish
(CAR), UK calculation housing
LifeCycle Franklin & In-house database Commercial
Andrews, UK
Knowledgebase Faithful & Gould In-house database Materials þ installation þ waste Commercial
(Atkins), UK
Ramboll Carbon Ramboll, UK Bath ICE v.1.6a, Embodied energy and carbon of Commercial
calculator In-house engineering building assemblies
judgement

by Sartori and Hestnes [26] and Dixit et al. [21]. These
show that authors have found a wide range of values for
the embodied energy and carbon for buildings, as shown in
Figures 4 and 5. Dixit quotes Ding [27] who shows
embodied energy values of between 3.6 and 8.76 GJ/m2
floor area. The two highest values come from papers by
Treloar et al. [28,29], who use a hybrid input-output
analysis to reach the values. Sartori and Hestnes show
values between 10 and 45 kWh/m2/yr [quoting references
30,31] equivalent to a total of 1.8 and 8.1 GJ/m2 floor area
for a 50 year lifespan (1 GJ ¼ 278 kWh).
Sartori and Hestnes compare the results for embodied
energy with operational energy. Rather than plotting the
full embodied energy, most of which is used during stages
A1-A5 (see Figure 2), instead they divide it by the design
life of the building, giving an equivalent embodied energy
 34 A.M. Moncaster and J-Y. Song

Figure 4. Embodied energy values in residential buildings, from Dixit et al., 2010 (p.1242) [21].
Downloaded by [Princeton University] at 12:14 22 September 2013

Figure 5. Normalised total energy for end use energy cases in residential buildings reproduced from Sartori and Hestnes, 2007 (Figure 5
p. 254) [26].

‘spend per year’ to compare with the operational energy per
year. The total embodied energy for the building can be
found by multiplying the ‘annual’ embodied energy by the
life expectancy. The case in the first column [30] therefore
has (25 kWh/m2/yr x 50 years) total embodied energy. This
is equivalent to 20 years worth of operating energy (that is
(25x50)/60 kWh/m2).
4. Summary, discussion & conclusion
4.1 Summary
There are no current regulations requiring the measure-
ment of embodied energy and carbon in buildings.
Therefore the available data and methodologies are varied
in scope and application. There are three main sources of
available information:
(1) There are several databases which include embodied
energy and carbon of standard building materials and
components. Some of these are construction sector-
specific, including that developed at Bath University
[7], while others contain more general product data.
These provide data for the ‘cradle to factory gate’
phase of the embodied energy. Manufacturers are also
starting to develop their own EPDs which include this
data, and several of these are publicly available.
(2) Both commercial and in-house software tools have
been developed to calculate whole life-cycle
embodied energy for buildings and infrastructure
projects. This is known as ‘cradle to grave’ analysis.
(3) Detailed life cycle analyses of specific buildings,
including housing developments and individual
 International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development
dwellings, have also been carried out by academic
researchers.
The proposed European standard pr EN 15804 sets out
a clear methodology for the development of Environmen-
tal Product Declarations, using a process-based life cycle
assessment as shown in Figure 2. This calls for a
mandatory assessment of the impacts of stage 1 (product),
and optional assessment of the impacts of stage 2
(construction process), stage 3 (use) and stage 4 (end of
life). Other methodologies for life cycle assessment have
been proposed including Input-Output analysis and a
hybrid version of the two.
A review of both the databases and the research
literature shows a wide range for the calculated embodied
energy of buildings. This range in reported figures is due to
the use of diverse product data arrived at through different
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LCA methodologies, different boundaries and often for
specific manufacturers, which are therefore non-compar-
able; different calculation methodologies for the LCA of
the whole building; and different building construction
and designs. Perhaps most crucially, in spite of the
likelihood that they are underestimated by current analysis
methods, the results show that embodied energy and
carbon can be a very significant absolute value, as well as
an increasingly high proportion of the whole life energy
and carbon.
4.2 Discussion and conclusion
The existing databases provide limited data for the product
stage (stage 1) of the process – that is for the embodied
energy and carbon in the building materials. There is less
data still for composite components, such as windows,
services components and innovative materials and
products. There is also a particular shortage of data across
the construction sector in the embodied energy used and
carbon emitted during stages 2 (construction), 3 (in use)
and 4 (end of life) (see Figure 2).
Many construction projects last for several years and
have hundreds of workers on site carrying out energy
intensive activities. The accurate prediction of energy use
and carbon emissions during standard site operations is
a fundamental part of the calculation for whole life
embodied energy. Separately the development of off-site
construction systems has been heralded as a ‘sustainable’
solution, but the claims have not yet been justified through
comparative calculations. The development of an accurate
‘costing’ method for both on-site and off-site construction
activities will enable the comparison of different
techniques and materials. In addition there is a lack of
general data on the carbon and energy savings to be made
by site management operations such as reuse of subgrade
rather than the import of new materials. Furthermore the
calculation of the impacts of transport to site of
35
construction materials will support the European standard
BS EN 15643, which considers the social and economic
sustainability of construction works in parts 3 and 4 giving
a strong driver for the specification of local materials.
The elements of the in-use phase which relate to
embodied impacts include replacement and refurbishment,
while ongoing maintenance and repair can be considered
as part of the operational energy requirements, in
accordance with the suggestions of the SFfC [15]. A clear
understanding of service life of individual components is
necessary for replacement and refurbishment to be
calculated as part of the whole life embodied impacts of
a building, and will consist of a proportion of stages 1 and
2 above.
Finally there is limited data on the energy used by
demolition, reuse and recycling processes at the end of life
of a building. While these may be unimportant for building
types with a long expected lifetime such as UK housing, it
is a key element of short expected lifespans such as stadia,
where design approaches are often required to consider
deconstruction and reuse of components.
In conclusion, it is essential to measure the whole life
embodied energy and carbon of buildings, as well as their
operational energy and carbon emissions. The compre-
hensive development of a robust methodology, and a
deeper understanding of its limitations, is a necessary
prerequisite for this. Various initiatives to develop and
collate data and make it freely available are still in their
infancy, and these should be encouraged by the
construction industry. It is hoped that the forthcoming
standardisation of EPDs should ensure that all manufac-
turers produce equivalent information for their products
within a few years. However the diversity of products used
within construction will mean that the LCA of individual
buildings will remain complex.
This review will guide the future development of a
consistent and transparent database and software tool to
calculate the embodied energy and carbon of buildings
within the specific context of the UK.
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