Work

Establishment of an Environmental Impact Factor Database for Building Materials to Support Building Life Cycle Assessments in China

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: The construction industry increasingly poses significant threats on the environment, highlighting the importance of developing life cycle assessments (LCAs). Research on building LCA databases has been carried out in many countries. However, in China, the absence of public data for environmental impact assessments poses significant challenges for building life cycle assessments (LCA). Therefore, this study aims to facilitate the life cycle assessment of buildings in China by comparing and analyzing databases from South Korea and the European Union. The goal is to establish a unit-based environmental impact database for Chinese building materials. Three environmental impact factors of ten major building materials in these three databases were compared and a basis for the inter-application of the databases was established. Based on the combination of the analysis results, the supplementation of the environmental impact factor database of building materials in China was proposed. In addition, a case study using a quantity take-off (QTO) for an actual building in China was performed to review the plan’s applicability.

Source: Buildings

DOI: 10.3390/buildings14010228

Authors: Hyeong-Jae Jang, Seong-Jo Wang, Sung-Ho Tae, Peng-Fei Zheng

Institution: Hanyang University

Language: English

Topic: Environmental Impact and Sustainability

Subfield: Environmental Engineering

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Responsible consumption and production, Sustainable cities and communities, Climate action

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,955