Helmuth Kreiner

Assessment of the environmental performance of buildings: A critical evaluation of the influence of technical building equipment on residential buildings

PurposeSustainability assessments of buildings using the life cycle approach have become more and more common. This includes the assessment of the environmental performance of buildings. However, the influence of the construction products used for the fabric, the finishing, and the technical building equipment of buildings has hardly been described in literature. For this reason, we evaluated the influence of the technical building equipment and its impact on the environment for different residential buildings.Materials and methodsFive residential buildings were evaluated by applying the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) (ISO14040) expressed using quantitative assessment categories according to prEN15978.Results and discussionResults show that the optimization of energy performance has already reached a high level in Austria, so that the overall potential for possible improvements is quite low. Especially in low-energy and passive–house-standard residential buildings, the limits for energy optimization in the use phase have mostly been achieved. In contrast to this, the integrated LCA (iLCA) findings attribute a high optimization potential to the construction products used for the technical building equipment as well as to the building fabric and finishing. Additionally, the passive house shows the lowest contribution of the technical building equipment on the overall LCA results.ConclusionsThe iLCA findings suggest that it is recommended to include the technical building equipment for future assessments of the environmental performance of buildings. It is also suggested to use a broad number of environmental indicators for building LCA.

Sustainable buildings, construction products and technologies: linking research and construction practice

In the last two decades and especially since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1985 and the Rio Declaration in 1992(SchubertandLang2005; Klopffer2003;WECD1987), the issue of sustainability and sustainable development has increasingly received general recognition from the public as key topic. Legislators and other political decision-makers at all levels of government are now aware of the importance of promoting measures for environmental protection and social justice while still pursuing economic growth and economic stability. The environmental aspects of sustainability are treated by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006). Transferring the principles of sustainable development into the construction sector requires a change of paradigm. But, this transfer is challenged by the fact that there is no universally accepted definition of, and no unique solution for, sustainable buildings. The perception of what comprises a sustainable building is changing over time and depends on one’s location. It istimely to push this paradigm changefrom theory into practice, and this was actualized by organizing a conference to make a significant contribution to the development of sustainable building in Central Europe by targeting policymakers, investors, practitioners, users, researchers and students.