The evaluation of sufficiency strategies in the building sector using life cycle assessment
Publicerad
Författare
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
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Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
The building sector has a monumental impact on the planet’s environmental state. Despite
ongoing efforts, emissions are growing, partly due to increasing consumption, where resource
improvements are consumed by expenditure. Efficiency and renewables through technology
and sustainable resources cannot reduce the impact of growing demand without a decrease in
overall consumption.
In recent years, sufficiency has been highlighted as a mitigation strategy with great potential
to reduce the environmental impact of the built environment. However, there are few clear
examples of definite strategies in the building sector. Furthermore, many building sustainability
frameworks include a life cycle assessment, but the result is typically presented as total impact
per m2. This makes sufficiency problematic to evaluate, as the main strategies for the building
sector are to reduce impact by reducing building and unit size, material demand, and energy
consumption. There are currently few examples of sufficiency in LCA, and none are related
to the building sector. For sufficiency to be successful in the building sector, the effect of the
strategies needs to be quantifiable by LCA, as this is a prevalent method within sustainability
and building performance analysis.
This thesis explores how LCA can be applied to estimate the effect of sufficiency strategies
within housing. The study implements the idea of Sufficiency LCA, using a sufficiency functional
unit along with the conventional functional unit, evaluating possible measurements and
the effect of strategies. Furthermore, the influence of functional units is studied by testing
various units that could change the perception of the building’s impact and provide a more
holistic assessment.
The thesis concludes that a comparison to show the impact saved is required to evaluate
sufficiency. One option is through an additional functional unit measuring the savings effect
(a sufficiency functional unit), which is most effective for sufficiency strategies regarding unit
sizes and functions. The second option is comparative analysis with other products, which
works better for strategies concerning material use. Furthermore, including area per capita or
capita as a functional unit would better present the function and size of a building, along with
highlighting crucial sufficiency strategies, such as density and co-living. Moreover, multiple
trade-offs can be seen between embodied and operational emissions and between production,
maintenance, and end-of-life stages for materials.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
Sufficiency, LCA, functional unit, architecture, housing, transformation, density