This document discusses life cycle assessment (LCA), which involves compiling and evaluating the potential environmental impacts of a product or system throughout its life cycle from raw material acquisition to end of life. LCA can be used for product development, strategic planning, and public policymaking. The key steps of LCA include defining the goal and system boundaries, conducting an inventory analysis of inputs and outputs, assessing potential environmental impacts, and interpreting the results to determine ways to reduce impacts and make conclusions. The document also notes that buildings are a major target for LCA due to their large environmental footprint and that LCA of buildings typically focuses on a life cycle energy assessment.

1. Life Cycle
Assessment

2. Contents
• What is Life Cycle Assessment ?
• Why it is required?
• How it is performed ?
• Life Cycle Assessment of buildings
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3. What is Life Cycle Assessment?
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“Compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and the potential environmental
impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle”
This establishes an environmental profile of the system.
What can be done with LCA?
• Product or project development and improvement
• Strategic planning
• Public policy making
Raw
material
Acquisition
Manufactur
ing
Use &
Service
Recovery
Treatment
&
Disposal

4. Product Life Cycle
Raw Material
Acquisition
Material
Processing
Manufacture
&
Assembly
Use &
Service
Retirement
&
Recovery
Treatment
disposal
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W W W WW W
Reuse
M, E M, EM, E M, E M, EM, E
Remanufacture
Closed-loop Recycle Open-loop Recycle
• M,E => Material and Energy inputs to process and distribution
• W => Waste (Gas, Liquid, or Solid) output from product, process, or distribution.

5. Why LCA is required?
In “meeting needs of present without compromising the ability
to meet future needs”, we are faced with some obstacles
• Governmental/regulatory barriers
• Uncertain objectives/goals
• Lack of tools to measure our progress
Sometimes our intuition is not a sufficient framework for
analysis!
LCA = systematic method for comparing products and policies
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6. How it is done?
• Goal & Scope Definition
Defines the purposes, audience, and system boundaries.
• Inventory Analysis (LCI)
1. Function & functional unit
2. Data Collection and Calculations
3. Assumptions
4. Limitations
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7. How it is done?
• Impact Assessment (LCIA)
What are the environmental, social, and economic affects?
• Interpretation
1. Ways to reduce environmental impacts.
2. Conclusions drawn from the study.
3. Recommendations
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8. Life Cycle Assessment of buildings
Buildings became a major target for
environmental improvement as
building sector accounted for nearly
 40% of the world’s energy
consumption,
30% of raw material use and
33% of the related global
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
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9. In the construction industry, the materials used in construction, operation, and
demolition are varied and the range of environmental criteria that are relevant
to buildings is potentially enormous.
This poses a limitation to perform Life Cycle Assessment of individual
components of buildings.
Buildings consume energy directly or indirectly in all phases of their life cycle
right from the cradle to the grave. Hence, they are analyzed by Life Cycle
Energy Assessment.
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Life Cycle Assessment of buildings

10. Fig. 2. Materials contributing 94.1% of initial embodied energy and 93.6% of life cycle embodied energy requirements. (Note: “Total
embodied energy” includes primary energy from material production, transportation and construction.)
Chris Scheuer, Gregory A Keoleian, Peter Reppe
Life cycle energy and environmental performance of a new university building: modeling challenges and design
implications
Energy and Buildings, Volume 35, Issue 10, 2003, 1049–1064
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11. Fig. 5. Distributions of life cycle environmental burdens for five impact categories.
Chris Scheuer, Gregory A Keoleian, Peter Reppe
Life cycle energy and environmental performance of a new university building: modeling challenges and design
implications
Energy and Buildings, Volume 35, Issue 10, 2003, 1049–1064
Life Cycle Assessment_ CIVIL SCHOLAR11

12. Conclusion
There is a growing attention for sustainability in the construction sector.
Current regulatory frameworks are developed to facilitate the implementation
of the assessment of environmental performances.
Despite some limitations of the LCA technique, it is still a powerful and science-
based tool to evaluate the environmental impacts.
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13. References
• Life cycle energy and environmental performance of a new university
building: modeling challenges and design implications by Chris Scheuer, Gregory
A.Keoleian, Peter Reppe.
• United Nations Environment Programme. Common carbon metric for measuring
energy use and reporting greenhouse gas emissions from building operations; 2009.
• Renewable and Sustainable energy reviews : vol 26, Oct 2013
• LCA NPTEL Course by Brajesh Kumar Dubey, IIT Kharagpur.
• ISO 14040, ISO 14044
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14. THANKYOU