Life cycle assessment of green building technologies

Abstract

The environmental effects of an item or a procedure through its life cycle can be found using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Acquisition of raw materials, production, usage and the end-of-life phases of a technology is part of LCA. This projects aims to come up with a LCA model for a green building technology by taking into account the input such as raw materials and energy resources and output such as emissions during each phase of the life cycle of the technology. The LCA study was done with respect to the T5 lights that are used in the Zero Energy Building (ZEB) situated in Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Academy. The LCA study was conducted using consumption figures provided by BCA, Ecoinvent database as well as references to past studies that were done on lighting fixtures and lamps. Comparisons that were carried out between the different types of lighting technologies such as incandescent lamps and Light Emitting Diode (LED) in these studies were referred to as well. The analysis and comparison shows that the energy consumption during the usage phase contributes the most to the total environment impact, while the manufacturing phase has a small yet somewhat important contribution and the transport and end-of-life stages contribute the least.