IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v9y2017i6p922-d100137.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Taking the Time Characteristic into Account of Life Cycle Assessment: Method and Application for Buildings

Author

Listed:
  • Yurong Zhang

    (Department of disaster prevention mitigation and construction technology, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University of Technology, No. 18 Chao Wang Road, Xia Cheng District, Hangzhou 310014, China)

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) involves many temporal issues. It is necessary to make a clear distinction between long-term impacts and short-term impacts, especially for those structures with long service life, such as buildings. With their long service life of 50 years, a great deal of maintenance and repairs could be conducted, causing a respective environmental impact. In this paper we explored a monetization method to convert the life cycle environmental impact into a life cycle environmental cost to address the temporal issues involved in LCA by discounting. This method can facilitate decision-making when tradeoffs between current and future environmental impacts exist. Moreover, this method can be used as an effective supplement to life cycle cost and provide decision support for making trade-off between cost and environmental impact. Finally, a building located in Xiamen City, China was selected as a case study and analyzed by the proposal LCA method. The results indicated that carbon cost in the operational stage is the maximum, building material production and transportation stages are ranked second, and the amount in the demolition stage is negligible, compared with the other three stages. Additionally, with the increase of the discount rate, the carbon cost in different life cycle stages will decrease, the percentage of the carbon cost in the operational stage will gradually decrease, but the percentage of the carbon cost in building material production and transportation stages will gradually increase.

Suggested Citation

  • Yurong Zhang, 2017. "Taking the Time Characteristic into Account of Life Cycle Assessment: Method and Application for Buildings," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-14, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:6:p:922-:d:100137
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/922/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/922/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    2. Christopher Barrington-Leigh & Fatemeh Behzadnejad, 2017. "Erratum to: Evaluating the short-term cost of low-level local air pollution: a life satisfaction approach," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 19(1), pages 229-229, January.
    3. Chau, C.K. & Leung, T.M. & Ng, W.Y., 2015. "A review on Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Energy Assessment and Life Cycle Carbon Emissions Assessment on buildings," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 395-413.
    4. Christopher Barrington-Leigh & Fatemeh Behzadnejad, 2017. "Evaluating the short-term cost of low-level local air pollution: a life satisfaction approach," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 19(2), pages 269-298, April.
    5. Wang, Zhaoxia & Zhao, Jing & Li, Meng, 2017. "Analysis and optimization of carbon trading mechanism for renewable energy application in buildings," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 435-451.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christina Wulf & Jasmin Werker & Christopher Ball & Petra Zapp & Wilhelm Kuckshinrichs, 2019. "Review of Sustainability Assessment Approaches Based on Life Cycles," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-43, October.
    2. Avi Friedman, 2017. "Sustainable and Resource—Efficient Homes and Communities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-3, December.
    3. Sarah M. Jordaan & Junghun Lee & Maureen R. McClung & Matthew D. Moran, 2021. "Quantifying the ecosystem services values of electricity generation in the US Chihuahuan Desert: A life cycle perspective," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 25(4), pages 1089-1101, August.
    4. Patricia Schneider-Marin & Anne Winkelkotte & Werner Lang, 2022. "Integrating Environmental and Economic Perspectives in Building Design," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-27, April.
    5. Shu Su & Jingyi Ju & Yujie Ding & Jingfeng Yuan & Peng Cui, 2022. "A Comprehensive Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment Model: Considering Temporally and Spatially Dependent Variations," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-18, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ahmadiani, Mona & Ferreira, Susana, 2019. "Environmental amenities and quality of life across the United States," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Song, Xiangnan & Lu, Yujie & Shen, Liyin & Shi, Xunpeng, 2018. "Will China's building sector participate in emission trading system? Insights from modelling an owner's optimal carbon reduction strategies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 232-244.
    3. Yenniel Mendoza & Roger Loyola & Alonso Aguilar & Roberto Escalante, 2019. "Valuation of Air Quality in Chile: The Life Satisfaction Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 367-387, August.
    4. Mechthild Donner & Anne Verniquet & Jan Broeze & Katrin Kayser & Hugo de Vries, 2021. "Critical success and risk factors for circular business models valorising agricultural waste and by-products," Post-Print hal-03004851, HAL.
    5. Cornelis Leeuwen & Jos Frijns & Annemarie Wezel & Frans Ven, 2012. "City Blueprints: 24 Indicators to Assess the Sustainability of the Urban Water Cycle," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 26(8), pages 2177-2197, June.
    6. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    7. Jim Butcher, 2006. "The United Nations International Year of Ecotourism: a critical analysis of development implications," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 6(2), pages 146-156, April.
    8. Denise Ravet, 2011. "Lean production: the link between supply chain and sustainable development in an international environment," Post-Print hal-00691666, HAL.
    9. Mara Del Baldo, 2012. "Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Italian SMEs: the experience of some “spirited businesses”," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 16(1), pages 1-36, February.
    10. Megan Devonald & Nicola Jones & Sally Youssef, 2022. "‘We Have No Hope for Anything’: Exploring Interconnected Economic, Social and Environmental Risks to Adolescents in Lebanon," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-17, February.
    11. Rigby, Dan & Woodhouse, Phil & Young, Trevor & Burton, Michael, 2001. "Constructing a farm level indicator of sustainable agricultural practice," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 463-478, December.
    12. Michael Howes & Liana Wortley & Ruth Potts & Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Julie Davidson & Timothy Smith & Patrick Nunn, 2017. "Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, January.
    13. Shiferaw, Bekele & Holden, Stein, 1999. "Soil Erosion and Smallholders' Conservation Decisions in the Highlands of Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 739-752, April.
    14. Ibrahim Ari & Muammer Koc, 2018. "Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Understanding the Interrelations between Public Investment and Sovereign Debt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, October.
    15. Parnphumeesup, Piya & Kerr, Sandy A., 2011. "Stakeholder preferences towards the sustainable development of CDM projects: Lessons from biomass (rice husk) CDM project in Thailand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3591-3601, June.
    16. Pengji Wang & Adrian T. H. Kuah & Qinye Lu & Caroline Wong & K. Thirumaran & Emmanuel Adegbite & Wesley Kendall, 2021. "The impact of value perceptions on purchase intention of sustainable luxury brands in China and the UK," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 28(3), pages 325-346, May.
    17. Christoph M. Schmidt & Nils aus dem Moore, 2014. "Wie geht es uns? Die W3-Indikatoren für eine neue Wohlstandsmessung," RWI Positionen, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, pages 16, 03.
    18. Katundu Imasiku & Valerie M. Thomas & Etienne Ntagwirumugara, 2020. "Unpacking Ecological Stress from Economic Activities for Sustainability and Resource Optimization in Sub-Saharan Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-12, April.
    19. Chin-Shan Lu & Kuo-Chung Shang & Chi-Chang Lin, 2016. "Examining sustainability performance at ports: port managers’ perspectives on developing sustainable supply chains," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(8), pages 909-927, November.
    20. Kebede, Yohannes, 1993. "The Limits to Common Resource Management: The Bypassed Commons or Commons without Tragedy," MPRA Paper 662, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 May 1993.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:6:p:922-:d:100137. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.