Environmental and health related criteria for buildings - ANEC

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IBO - Environmental and Health related Criteria for Buildings other assessment tools in line with current ecolabelling practices, confirmed by this study, should be seen as the way forward and developed further.” Joint ANEC / ECOS comments on the ISO 14000 series review A detailed critical review of the LCA / EPD approach and corresponding standards is given in the Joint ANEC / ECOS comments on the ISO 14000 series review, http://www.anec.eu/attachments/ANEC-ENV-2007-G-030final.pdf 8.3. Main findings of the studies Incomplete coverage of environmental impacts LCA can only account for issues which can be quantified and aggregated (summarised), such as energy consumption or greenhouse gases. Obviously many important environmental impacts are not quantifiable in a meaningful way, e.g. biodiversity. Or in case of quantitative indicators, such as noise, it might be better to build a separate (individual) category for them, without trying to aggregate them with other impacts e.g. to a human-toxicity indicator. Many impacts should not be aggregated as they are site-specific or depend on local concentrations of pollutants rather than on total life cycle releases (e.g. noise, dust, or indoor air pollution). These impacts may also depend on local conditions (e.g. water consumption in dry areas versus wet areas). PRAKASH, REINTJES et al, 2008 (page 6): “The disregard of site-specific aspects is of conceptual nature and based on the fact that LCA seeks to aggregate environmental impacts over the whole life cycle of products.” Furthermore, some cause-effect relationships are not simple enough or sufficiently known with enough precision to permit quantitative cause-effect modelling. In such cases, it will be easier to work with qualitative and semi-quantitative indicators because the results are presented in a disaggregated way. In other cases potential impacts should be avoided following the precautionary principle (e.g. CMR-substances in building materials). When such impacts are of significant environmental importance, their coverage becomes a key requirement for achieving the overall goal of environment assessment. Hence, LCA cannot replace other product specific assessment methodologies but can only accompany them. PRAKASH, REINTJES et al, 2008 (page viii): “It is recommended to focus on different instruments, such as environmental impact assessment, chemical risk assessment etc. for measuring the non-LCA-indicators. The characterisation models in such cases would be rather formalised and not mathematical operationalisation of the environmental mechanisms. There may be a basic aggregation step, bringing text or qualitative inventory information together into a single summary, and/or summing quantitative inventory data within a category.” Correlation between LCA-indicators As it was clearly shown in IMPRO (2008), LCA indicators correlate with energy consumption. This is especially true on building level where specific characteristics of building materials are Final Report 86 31 03 2011
IBO - Environmental and Health related Criteria for Buildings averaged. But also on building material levels the indicators correlate in most cases perfectly with energy. Some exceptions: - Higher POCP-values are often found together with plastics, but they are low compared to POCP-values caused by e.g. solvent-based bitumen-coatings. It’s much easier to avoid products containing VOC than to calculate the POCP-value of the building (LIPP, 2009). - The production of metals like copper causes relatively high values in the acidification potential. - During the production of cement clinker CO 2 is released from limestone while sintering, resulting in a considerable global warming potential (GWP). This is also true – even though in a lesser extent – when limey clay is burned in brick plants. - Depending of the system borders the CO 2 -uptake of wood during photosynthesis can be credited. - Ozone depletion is not correlated with energy but with the release of (forbidden) ozone depleting substances. ODP is only of relevance in connection with old insulation material where it can be better handled by operation measurements than by calculating its LCA. Beside these process- or product-specific exceptions some allocation rules e.g. credits for recycling or substitution of fossil fuel through energy recovery can lead to a derivation of the direct energy-correlation. IMPRO, 2008 (page xvii): “Consequently, both primary energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are good proxy indicators to assess the environmental performance of the buildings” Life cycle approach As has been emphasized by the IMPRO-report (and many other studies before) the energy consumption for space and warm water heating plays an important role – within the overall energy consumption of residential buildings as well as of all consumer products. For new buildings, the product stage (cradle to gate) is also significant. Its relative importance varies from one impact category to the other. The construction process (transport and installation) can be neglected in an LCAcalculation as has been justified in several studies. LÜSNER (1996), for instance, showed that the construction process (including the transport of construction materials and products to the construction site) does not exceed 2 % (in some rare cases 9 %) of the life cycle impacts for bridges or roads. BRUCK & FELLNER (2004) came to similar results in regard to residential buildings: The energy consumption of building machines on-site as well as energy required for removal are negligible compared to the overall energy inputs for a building inuse. The efforts for collecting these data (if defaults will not be used) are rather high and the cost/benefit ratio is questionable. IMPRO, 2008 (page 22): “On this basis, and since the major environmental impacts lie in the use phase (especially heating energy uptake), the construction operation can reasonably be neglected.” As has been shown in ZELGER et al (2009) and BRUCK & FELLNER (2004) necessary renovation cycles contribute to essential material and energy inputs during the whole lifecycle of buildings and have to be taken into account Final Report 87 31 03 2011
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