LCA of constructing an industrial building: focus on embodied carbon and energy

Abstract

This work evaluates the embodied carbon and energy of an industrial building construction with 6733 m² of built area, following a LCA methodology, on a gate-to-gate approach. For the LCI it was used primary data of electricity, water and diesel fuel, directly measured at the construction site, and information about the building materials used in the architecture and stability phases, obtained from the specialty design and construction documents, complemented with secondary data from literature. Results show an embodied carbon of 508.57 kgCO2-eq/m² and an embodied energy of 4908.68 MJ/m2 for the construction of the industrial building, being the building materials the main contributor.