Environmental and health related criteria for buildings - ANEC

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IBO - Environmental and Health related Criteria for Buildings of the most important contributors for each considered impact category. Residential structures also scored highly in most impact categories (3 to 4 % of all products). The next important products of the category “Housing, furniture, equipment and utility use” were energy-using domestic appliances, e.g. refrigerators and washing machines. The IMPRO-study was meant to be a scientific contribution to the European Commission’s Integrated Product Policy (IPP). The considered environmental impact categories were selected “based on scientific robustness, relevance and practicability” leading to the conventional LCA-indicators: acidification, eutrophication, climate change, ozone layer depletion, and photochemical pollution. The primary energy consumption was also quantified. The study concentrated on residential buildings, including all relevant types of buildings used as household dwellings, from single-family houses to multi-apartment buildings, including existing and new dwellings in the EU-25. The environmental impacts were analysed for building structures and operation. The (little surprising) results of the study concerning LCA of buildings were (IMPRO, page xvii – xviii): - “The first finding […]” was “the similarity of trends shown over the different impact categories” reflecting “the important role of energy use in most of the environmental impacts quantified, first as a result of fuel combustion for space heating, and, second, as a result of the industry processes involved in the manufacturing of building products”. “Consequently, both primary energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are good proxy indicators to assess the environmental performance of the buildings.” - “The use phase of buildings, as dominated by the energy demand for heating is by far the highest for all buildings. For new buildings, the construction phase is also significant and its relative importance varies from one impact category to the other. The end-of-life phase is of much lower importance.” - “The use phase was also shown to be most important for new buildings with, however, a lower relative importance as a result of the better energy performance of these buildings. Regarding the new building construction phase, the impacts primarily stem from the construction of the exterior walls, the basement, and floors/ceilings. Interior walls, roof and windows only play a minor role.” The following improvement options for new and existing buildings were identified, focusing on use phase and construction phase: - For existing buildings measures reducing the heating and infiltration losses were shown to be an “environmental hotspot” (IMPRO, page xxi). - For new buildings the quantification of environmental improvement options has been limited to the impacts from the construction phase by changing the material composition of buildings. The results showed that significant environmental improvements could be expected only when “conventional” products like concrete, reinforced concrete, bricks were substituted by wood products. Precondition for this finding is that the wood is taken from a forest under sustainable management. It has to be mentioned that obvious improvement options like the “new concepts of passive housing” and “zero CO 2 emissions buildings” were beyond the scope of the IMPRO-Building Final Report 84 31 03 2011
IBO - Environmental and Health related Criteria for Buildings project. Furthermore HVAC (e.g. heating systems and cooling equipment/services, mechanical ventilation systems and building automation) were not considered “as they are not relevant for the identification of improvement options (p 22)” resulting in the exclusion of well-known improving options as for example the exchange of an old oil boiler. ANEC / Öko-Institut, Ökopol: Environmental product indicators and benchmarks in the context of environmental labels and declarations ANEC commissioned the Öko-Institut e.V. and Ökopol GmbH as subcontractor to conduct a research study on various issues related to environmental labels and declarations, which are of particular relevance to the consumers (PRAKASH, REINTJES et al, 2008). The issues involved: (a) the usefulness of life cycle assessment methodology for product labelling schemes, (b) feasibility of aggregation approaches, such as EcoGrade and Eco-indicator, for assessing the environmental performance of products, (c) inclusion of qualitative indicators not covered by the LCA-methodology, (d) the advantages and disadvantages of energy versus CO 2 -indicators and (e) quality benchmarks for environmental data sheets. According to ANEC (2010) the study shows that indicators based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology may not be the best option to suitably characterise and declare the environmental performance of a product. LCA methodology offers unique advantages such as comparisons of system alternatives or providing orientation. However, it also suffers from serious limitations including omissions of many relevant environmental aspects (e.g. sitespecific emissions such as noise, or non-quantifiable impacts such as biodiversity) and low accuracy and reliability of data. Hence, in many cases significant production or use phase indicators (e.g. energy efficiency, indoor emissions) derived from a variety of tools (e.g. chemical risk assessment) are a better choice for product labelling as these allow for differentiation of similar products compared to LCA indicators. A process for the identification of all relevant environmental aspects on a product by product basis, and involving all relevant stakeholders, is proposed. The findings of PRAKASH, REINTJES et al (2008) are also a relevant basis for the recommendations below. ANEC / FORCE Technology: Benchmarking and additional environmental information in the context of Type III environmental declarations The study of SCHMIDT & POULSEN (2007) seeks to combine information of type III label with those of type I label. To point this out a so called “Environmental data sheet” (EDS) is introduced. An important feature of EDS is that it compares the LCA-results of the considered product to the “average” product within the product group and additionally between the product groups. For that reason the LCA-results are normalised using average annual environmental impact of a European citizen leading to the unit “milli Person Equivalents” (mPE). Of major importance as additional information in EDS is the potential compliance with ecolabel (e.g. European Ecolabel, Blue Angel, and Nordic Swan). ANEC, 2009-1: “The Environmental Data Sheet concept, combining a product-specific selection of LCA indicators (for comparing different product categories) and indicators from Final Report 85 31 03 2011
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