Estimating whole life cycle carbon emissions of buildings: a literature review

Abstract

Building sector has been increasingly recognised as one of the significant sectors which emits considerable amount of carbon to the atmosphere. Therefore, lowering carbon emissions of buildings has become an essential response to the global carbon reduction targets. In response to that, many efforts have been put forward in estimating and reducing carbon emissions in this sector over the last few decades. Whole life cycle carbon of a building is considered as the total amount of operational and embodied carbon occurred throughout its lifecycle. A building life cycle consists of four main phases as product, construction, operation and end of life. Even though, many studies have examined the whole life cycle carbon emissions during the assessment zones of operational and detailed design, it was found no studies have been conducted to examine the whole life cycle carbon emissions during early stage of a design. However, it is believed that the carbon emission reduction potential is high in the early stages of a project. Accordingly, the aim of this paper was to review the existing literature on building life cycle carbon estimation in order to identify the reasons for the less focus on early stage life cycle carbon estimation and to learn further research aspects on life cycle carbon estimation. A comprehensive literature review was carried out referring secondary data sources to achieve this aim. It was found out that insufficient primary data and limited approaches in estimating life cycle carbon as a major reason for the less focus on life cycle carbon estimations in early stage of design. Accordingly, it creates the need of a rigorous approach for early stage life cycle carbon estimating.