An attributional life cycle assessment for an Italian residential multifamily building

ABSTRACT

The study describes an attributional life cycle assessment carried out according to the ISO standards and focused on an Italian multifamily residential building. The aim was developing an exhaustive and reliable inventory of high-quality primary data, comparing the environmental impacts along the three stages of the building life cycle. The pre-use phase takes into account the production of all the construction materials, transportation, and on-site assembling. The use phase quantifies the resource consumptions for 50 years of the building utilization and ordinary maintenance. The end-of-life phase includes the building demolition and the management of generated wastes. The results quantify how the design criteria affect the environmental performances of the residential building along its life cycle. The role of the pre-use phase appears remarkable for global warming potential (GWP), due to the huge impacts of steel and concrete production processes. The use phase gives the largest contributions, which reach 77% and 84% of the total, for the categories of global warming and non-renewable energy. The end-of-life phase provides limited avoided impacts. A comparative analysis quantifies the improvements achievable with an alternative type of partitions and external walls.

Acronyms: AC: air conditioning; C&DW: construction and demolition waste; CFL: compact fluorescent lamp; DHW: domestic hot water; EC: European Commission; EU: European Union; GDP: gross domestic product; GHG: greenhouse gases; GWP: global warming potential; LCA: life cycle assessment; LCI: life cycle inventory; LCIA: life cycle impact assessment; MFA: material flow analysis; NREP: non-renewable energy potential; RINP: respiratory inorganics potential; WFD: Waste Framework Directive

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable building; life cycle assessment; multifamily dwelling; resource optimization; construction and demolition waste

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Professor Domenico Asprone and Dr Costantino Menna (University Federico II of Naples, Italy), and to Dr Fabrizio Di Gregorio and Mr Antonio Torchia (AMRA s.c.ar.l., Italy) who contributed to the development of the preliminary stages of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Umberto Arena http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6635-2568

Additional information

Funding

The study has been carried out in the framework of the 3-year project ‘VINCES’ (Integrated Assessment of Life Cycle for Sustainable Building), supported by Regione Campania (Italy).