The Environmental Performance of Renewable Building Materials in the Context of Residential Construction

TLDR

The study conducts a life‑cycle assessment of alternative building materials for residential construction, covering stages from forest regeneration or mineral extraction to manufacturing, assembly, occupancy, repairs, and end‑of‑life. The LCA framework incorporates temporal distribution of events from seed growth to demolition, performing LCIs for individual products and services, then evaluating house‑level environmental impacts of energy use, resource consumption, and waste emissions. The analysis highlights improvement opportunities for future research.

Abstract

This paper presents the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of alternative building materials from forest resource regeneration or mineral extraction through product manufacturing, the assembly of products in constructing a residential home, occupancy and home repairs, and the eventual disposal or recycle. A unique feature of this study's LCA framework is that temporal distribution of events and associated environmental effects during the seed to demolition life cycle were considered by extending the scope to include forest growth through to demolition of the builidng. Our approach was to first conduct LCIs that quantified the energy, resource use, and emissions associated with a particular product, service, or activity. We followed this activity with the assessment of the house, and investigated the potential environmental consequences of energy and resource consumption and waste emissions. Finally we identified improvement opportunities for future research.