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Concept for Combining LCA and Hazardous Building Material Assessment for Decision Support Using BIM
(2022)
AbstractThe construction and building sector is responsible for a large part of the world’s resource and energy consumption and is considered the largest global emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Hazardous and toxic substances in building materials affect indoor air quality as well as the environment and thus have a high impact on human health, as we spend around 90 percent of our lives in buildings. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and hazardous building material requirements of green building certification systems allow to reduce the environmental and health impacts of building products and materials. However, they are usually very complex and time-consuming to perform and require expert knowledge to use the results for decision support. Digital approaches to support the simplified application of these methods and intuitive visualization of results are becoming increasingly important. Especially Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers a high potential for this purpose, as the integration and linking of geometric and semantic information in 3D-models for LCA and hazardous building material assessment can be done much more efficiently and intuitively. Within the scope of this work, the following three objectives were pursued (1) development of a method for combining LCA and hazardous building material assessment, (2) simplification of the results by converting them into comprehensible indicators for decision support, and (3) implementation of the method in a BIM-based digital assistant for intuitive visualization and communication. The preliminary results show a concept for combined use of LCA and hazardous building material assessment in Germany with differentiation in six use cases. A prototypical implementation as BIM-integrated digital assistant was developed for one of these use cases. For the first time, this prototype provides understandable feedback in real time of LCA and hazardous building material requirements. This research project contributes to the awareness in the context of embodied impacts and low emitting materials in buildings and advances the current digitalization potentials.
This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules whichhave been integrated into electric vehicle applications, also called vehicle integrated photovoltaics(VIPV). The LCA was executed by means of GaBi LCA software with Ecoinvent v2.2 as a backgrounddatabase, with a focus on the global warming potential (GWP). A light utility electric vehicle (LUV)named StreetScooter Work L, with a PV array of 930 Wp, was analyzed for the location of Cologne,Germany. An operation time of 8 years and an average shadowing factor of 30% were assumed.The functional unit of this LCA is 1 kWh of generated PV electricity on-board, for which an emissionfactor of 0.357 kg CO2-eq/kWh was calculated, whereas the average grid emissions would be 0.435 kgCO2-eq/kWh. Hence, charging by PV power hence causes lower emissions than charging an EV bythe grid. The study further shows how changes in the shadowing factor, operation time, and otheraspects affect vehicle’s emissions. The ecological benefit of charging by PV modules as compared togrid charging is negated when the shadowing factor exceeds 40% and hence exceeds emissions of0.435 kg CO2-eq/kWh. However, if the operation time of a vehicle with integrated PV is prolonged to12 years, emissions of the functional unit go down to 0.221 kg CO2-eq/kWh. It is relevant to point outthat the outcomes of the LCA study strongly depend on the location of use of the vehicle, the annualirradiation, and the carbon footprint of the grid on that location.
Life cycle assessment is a crucial tool in evaluating systems performances for sustainability and decision-making. This paper provided environmental impact of integrating renewable energy systems to the utility-grid based on a baseline optimized energy production data from “HOMER” for renewable systems modelling of a site in northern Nigeria. The ultimate goal was to ascertain the best hybrid option(s) in sustaining the environment. Different assumptions and scenarios were modelled and simulated using Ganzleitlichen Bilanz (GaBi). Uncertainty analysis was ensured to the impact data based on pedigree-matrix and Excel-program, as well as overall policy relevance. The results of the impact categories revealed first scenario (i.e., conventional path-based) with the highest impacts on global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), human toxicity potential (HTP), and abiotic depletion potential (ADP fossils). The lowest impacts arise in
the renewable-based scenarios for all the considered categories except the Ozone-layer depletion potential Category where the highest contribution falls in the third scenario (i.e., photovoltaic (PV)/biomass-biogas system) although all values being infinitesimal. In quantitative terms, the reduction in the GWP from the highest being the first scenario to the lowest being the fourth scenario (i.e., wind/biomass-biogas system) was 96.5%. Hence, with the outstanding contributions of the hybrid renewable systems, adopting them especially the lowest impact scenarios with expansions is relevant for environmental sustainability.