1,721,099 research outputs found
The effect of building and material service life on the life cycle embodied energy of an apartment building
No full textA life cycle assessment approach to improving the energy performance of housing: a case study
No full textUsing life cycle assessment to reduce the energy use and global warming impacts of a detached house in Melbourne, Australia
No full textHouse size and future building energy efficiency regulations in Australia
Full text linkThe size of houses in Australia has significantly increased over the last decades. New houses have higher embodied and operational energy requirements due to their increased use of materials and larger area. Yet, current building energy efficiency regulations fail to adequately capture the effect of house size because of their omission of embodied energy and their sole use of a spatial functional unit for operational energy (e.g. MJ/m²). This study quantifies the effect of house size on life cycle energy demand in order to inform future building energy efficiency regulations. It uses a parametric model of a typical suburban house in Melbourne, Australia and varies its floor area from 100 to 392 m² for different household sizes. Both initial and recurrent embodied energy requirements are quantified using hybrid analysis and all operational energy end-uses (thermal and non-thermal) are calculated in primary energy terms over 50 years. Results show that larger houses appear to be more energy efficient per m² than smaller houses while actually having a much higher life cycle energy demand. Also, embodied energy represents 49-70% of the energy demand across all 360 variations. Guidelines are provided to improve current building energy efficiency regulations
Modeling the carbon footprint of urban development: a case study in Melbourne
No full textIt is estimated that urban areas account for 60-80% of global energy use and are responsible for the emission of more than 70% of global greenhouse gases. Since most future population growth is expected to be in urban areas, one main question regarding urban planning is how new urban communities should be developed in order to minimise resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This research will develop a spatially explicit model to simulate the carbon footprint of urban growth under three different development scenarios: 1) the horizontal (the business as usual (BAU) scenario), 2) vertical (Le Corbusier’s ‘Radiant City’ scenario), and 3) the mixed scenario. The intention of the research is to 1) assist in identifying the ideal spatial composition and configuration of suburban communities with potential to consume less resources and produce less greenhouse gas emissions; 2) propose an alternative approach to greenhouse gas emission control at the neighbourhood level; and 3) inform planning and design actions aimed at realising low carbon development
The Australian construction industry’s approach to embodied carbon assessment: a scoping study
No full textThe building sector is responsible for a significant proportion of a nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. In an attempt to mitigate these emissions, industry and government have been mainly focussed on reducing operational emissions associated with buildings, leaving the embodied emissions largely ignored. As operational emissions continue to decrease, embodied emissions will start to play a larger role in the life cycle emissions of the built environment. Several tools and datasets have been created internationally and locally within Australia that seek to quantify these embodied carbon emissions. However due to lack of information, it is unclear first of all how the Australian construction industry is currently approaching embodied carbon analysis and secondly what tools and databases are being used for this analysis. A survey was executed as part of the Integrated Carbon Metrics (ICM) Project that aimed to not only addresses this lack of information but to also inform the ICM project tool outputs. These tool outputs will seek to address these often ignored embodied emissions and aim to quantify the carbon fabric of Australia’s built environment
A framework for the integrated cost-benefit analysis of the use of recycled aggregate concrete in structural applications
Full text linkRecycled concrete waste in the form of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) is presently used mostly as a road base filler replacing natural aggregate in Australia. However, instead of manufacturing Natural Aggregate Concrete (NAC) using Natural Aggregate (NA) as a constituent material to use in structural applications, there is potential to use RCA replacing NA to manufacture Recycled Aggregate Concrete (RAC). This paper presents a framework to estimate the costs and benefits of producing RAC, against producing NAC. The framework applies to the system boundary of production processes of RAC, NAC and the life cycle of their respective constituent materials. Cost-benefit assessment (CBA) is identified as an appropriate method to evaluate the internalised impacts as well as external costs concerning the use of both RAC and NAC. This paper proposes a framework to cover the primary impacts which are directly attributable to the RAC or the NAC, as well as the secondary impacts which results in the immediate boundary due to the proposed changes using CBA. The basic methodology for the evaluation of the above impacts considering technical, financial, environmental and social perspectives to obtain a comparable value is discussed in the paper
An early-stage design decision-support tool for selecting building assemblies to minimise a building’s life cycle energy demand
No full textThe significant effects of the building industry on the natural environment are well documented and improving the environmental performance of buildings is an on-going challenge. This is particularly the case for projects with restrictive budgets and timelines and because many existing environmental assessment tools are designed to be used too late in the design process. The use of tools during the early design stages may assist in achieving greater improvements in a building’s environmental performance. However, user-friendly tools with the ability to comprehensively compare environmental information between various building assemblies and materials, which can be easily adopted during the early design stages of a project, are not readily available. This paper presents the progress to date in developing a tool which supports building designers in identifying and selecting preferred building assemblies with the aim of minimising a building’s life cycle energy demand. The tool is based on comprehensive energy performance data for a broad range of building assemblies across all Australian climate zones. Allowing for adjustments to a set of pre-defined and user-defined assemblies the designer is able to see how assemblies perform in relation to each other. This provides valuable information to support decision-making relating to minimising the life cycle energy demand of buildings
Does current policy on building energy efficiency reduce a building’s life cycle energy demand?
No full textBuilding energy efficiency regulations often focus solely on thermal energy demands. Increasing the thermal performance of the building envelope through additional insulation and efficient windows is the typical approach to increasing building thermal energy efficiency. This can result in a significant increase in embodied energy which is currently not considered in building energy regulations. A case study house in Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia is used to investigate the life cycle primary energy repercussions of increasing building energy efficiency levels over 50 years. Embodied and operational energy are quantified using the comprehensive hybrid approach and a dynamic software tool, respectively. Energy efficiency is improved by material or design changes as well as a combination of both. Results show that while increasing the envelope thermal energy performance yields thermal operational energy savings, these can be offset by the additional embodied energy required for additional insulation materials and more efficient windows. The point at which increasing the thermal performance of the envelope does not yield life cycle energy benefits is just above current minimum energy efficiency standards in Australia. In order to reduce a building’s life cycle energy demand, a more comprehensive approach that includes embodied energy and emphasises design changes is needed
- …
