A hotspot analysis shows the relative contribution from each building material to the midpoint impact categories. The ReCiPe 2016 impact assessment method is used to calculate environmental impacts for 18 midpoint categories and 3 endpoint categories.
OPENLCA BUILDING MATERIAL SOFTWARE
The study is a process LCA, modelled in the OpenLCA software using the Ecoinvent 3.7 inventory database. In this thesis, the case study assesses the environmental impacts from a residential house in Iceland utilizing fiberglass and stone wool panels as the main building materials. For more comprehensive reporting of environmental impacts, it is necessary to develop a baseline for comparison which this study, among others, contributes to. Many LCA studies focus only on embodied GHG emissions but studies show that it is also relevant to look beyond GHG emissions.
This is largely due to the use of traditional building materials, such as concrete and steel, which have some of the highest embodied emissions of conventional building materials. The pre-use phase becomes even more significant as the carbon intensity of energy production decreases, reducing use phase emissions proportionally, and the energy efficiency of buildings increases, increasing the proportion of pre-use phase emissions. In previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies, the use phase was associated with the highest lifetime emissions from buildings, but more recent studies show the relative importance of the pre-use phase. Buildings are a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for around 38% of global emissions.
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