Dynamic life cycle assessment to compare conventional and bio-based building construction impact on global warming
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Perustieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
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JOI-SCI
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en
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65+9
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Abstract
In a context of climate emergency, storing temporarily carbon in biogenic construction materials seems a particularly attractive strategy to mitigate important building sector impact on global warming. Usually, environmental impacts are assessed using standard Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a product-based method that gives notably the global warming potential (GWP). In LCA, all greenhouse gas emissions linked to the product are assumed to be released in the first year even if they are emitted at different times within the chosen time horizon. Their GWP is calculated at this time horizon, which is usually 100 years. Moreover, biogenic carbon is often excluded of the calculation assuming a balance between captured and emitted carbon. On the other hand, new global warming impact calculation methods such as dynamic LCA propose to include timing in the calculation and to assess the value of temporarily storing carbon in long-lived products such as building structures. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of these hypotheses on the estimated GWP of building materials, by comparing the static and a dynamic LCA approach. Two types of exterior walls were compared: one made with conventional materials (concrete and glass wool), the other mostly composed of bio-based materials such as straw and timber. Several parameters are discussed in detail: the real lifespan of buildings in France, carbon storage by forests and annual crops, the time horizon used to calculate GWP, the different greenhouse gases emitted, the accuracy of CO2 equivalent as an indicator of global warming. Finally, the overall impact on the global warming of different building construction and renovation materials is estimated under different scenarios applied to the French context.Description
Supervisor
Ras, RobinThesis advisor
Lecompte, ThibautHellouin de Menibus, Arthur