Application of Life Cycle Energy Assessment in Residential Buildings: A Critical Review of Recent Trends

Hossein Omrany, Veronica Soebarto, Ehsan Sharifi and Ali Soltani
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Hossein Omrany: School of Architecture & Built Environment, University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia
Veronica Soebarto: School of Architecture & Built Environment, University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia
Ehsan Sharifi: School of Architecture & Built Environment, University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia
Ali Soltani: School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-30

Abstract: Residential buildings are responsible for a considerable portion of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Correspondingly, many attempts have been made across the world to minimize energy consumption in this sector via regulations and building codes. The focus of these regulations has mainly been on reducing operational energy use, whereas the impacts of buildings’ embodied energy are frequently excluded. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the energy performance of buildings via a life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) approach. The increasing amount of research has however caused the issue of a variation in results presented by LCEA studies, in which apparently similar case studies exhibited different results. This paper aims to identify the main sources of variation in LCEA studies by critically analyzing 26 studies representing 86 cases in 12 countries. The findings indicate that the current trend of LCEA application in residential buildings suffers from significant inaccuracy accruing from incomplete definitions of the system boundary, in tandem with the lack of consensus on measurements of operational and embodied energies. The findings call for a comprehensive framework through which system boundary definition for calculations of embodied and operational energies can be standardized.

Keywords: life cycle energy assessment; life cycle assessment; residential buildings; energy efficiency; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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