Building Green Course

1. Building Green Course Practical Sustainability: Taking The Stress Out of ESD Compliance and Rating

2. Building Green Course Unit 4 – Lifecycle Assessment in Practise

3. Introduction • What is Life Cycle Assessment? • Simplifying LCA – Life cycle thinking in practice • Task#1 • ‘Quick Scan LCA’ -Using LCA to understand what’s important • ‘Quick Scan LCA’ -Using LCA to understand what’s important Task# 2 and Task#3 • Embodied Energy- and its impact in decision making • Transport Energy - the surprising impact of different modes of Transport • Practical use of embodied energy in projects: Now and in the future & Task#4 • Understanding Ecolabels and Environmental Standards: Fact from Fashion • Priority Setting Guides and Winning Products: Selecting key building elements • Sustainable Timber • Office Chairs • High performance lighting • Water disinfection systems • Greywater re-use systems (residential and commercial) • Case Study– integrating ecospecifier from the ground up

4. Module 1 Simplifying LCA – Part 1

5. Life Cycle Assessment • LCA Definition: The International Standards Organisation (ISO) within the ISO 14040 series of documents, has defined LCA as: • 'A technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product by: • compiling an inventory of relevant inputs and outputs of a product system; • evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with those inputs and outputs; and • interpreting the results of the inventory analysis and impact assessment phases in relation to the objectives of the study.' (ISO 1998)

6. Life Cycle Assessment • LCA Standards: The ISO Standards covering LCA are: • ISO14040 covers the principles and framework for LCA development; • ISO14041 covers goal, scope and definition of LCA and inventory analysis; • ISO14043 dealing with impact assessment; and • ISO14044 covering interpretation; • There are also technical reports with examples of how to undertake LCA

7. Life Cycle Assessment • LCA Uses: LCA is used by many sectors of industry and society for a variety of purposes including: • Research and Development • Corporate change; • Eco-labelling • Education; • Green purchasing; • Policy; • Process Improvement: Cleaner production and Eco-efficiency; • Environmental Management Systems – benchmarking and continuous improvement • Life Cycle Design (Design for Environment/EcoDesign/Life Cycle Engineering)

8. Life Cycle Assessment • LCA approaches:There are many other levels and styles of LCA used in a variety of different assessments often described as: • Life cycle thinking; • Life cycle based assessment; • Life cycle – quick scans • In Australia, to date, the dominant uses have been in: • process improvement and benchmarking • green procurement • design and product development. • Australian LCA data inventory project (AusLCI)

9. Applications

10. Applications Strategic for Australia

11. Applications LCA Tools for Buildings

12. Applications LCA Tools for Materials & Products

13. Applications Rating Tools may one day be regulated at minimum levels

14. Life Cycle Assessment • To date in Australia detailed LCAs have been undertaken only by large companies or programs: • e.g. BPIC & members, James Hardie, BHP, Pilkington, Boral, Vinyl Council, Visy, EcoRecycle Victoria and various State Packaging Covenant programs As a result of high cost, due to their detail and complexity.

15. BPIC Life Cycle Assessment Steel Products: The Australian Steel Institute Steel Reinforcement Institute Concrete Products: Concrete Masonry Association of Australia Cement, Concrete and Aggregates Australia Think Brick Roofing Tile Association Wood Products: Wood Council Australia Engineered Wood Products Association of Australia Windows and Glass: Australian Windows Association Glass & Glazing Association of Australia Insulation: Insulation Manufacturers Association

16. Life Cycle Assessment • LCA Methodology: There are four steps to undertaking LCAs which are common to all of these approaches: • Goal definition or scoping – what is the aim of the exercise and what is the functional unit to be used for the comparison? • Undertaking the Inventory Analysis – identifying and quantifying every individual impact; • Assessing the Environmental Impacts – quantifying the environmental and health implications of every individual or agglomerated (simplified) impact; • Interpreting the outcomes– assessing the outcomes of the study compared to scope and goals.

17. Life Cycle Assessment Framework 1.Goal and Scope Definition Interpretation • Direct applications: Product development and improvement Strategic planning Public policy making Marketing Other Inventory Analysis Impact Assessment Life Cycle Assessment • LCA Methodology: The four steps of LCA according to ISO and their interaction

18. Life Cycle Assessment • Setting or assessing study scope or boundaries is critical! • To achieve these outcomes an LCA study must first determine the study limits or system boundaries that will be studied. The determination of the study scope or boundaries and particularly any assumptions that might need to be made as part of the scope setting, is critical to the accuracy of the overall outcome.

19. Life Cycle Assessment • Schematic Scope for a comparative PVC LCA (USGBC)

20. Each category to be analysed is known as an inventory (LCI) Life Cycle Assessment • System boundaries for a waste recycling and energy recovery LCA • (Source: • Grant et al 2003)

21. Life Cycle Assessment • Most LCAs are comparative, i.e. compare a variety of products in the same use category e.g. a building element or finish and of a similar function: • Functional unit: 1 square meter • Functional task: roofing material • Which are equivalent functions? • Concrete roof tiles • Colorbond roof sheet • Suspended concrete roof • Can they be compared directly?

22. Life Cycle Assessment • Undertaking the Inventory Analysis • quantifies the material and energy inputs, as well as the environmental emissions and material outputs at each stage in the life cycle of a product or service. Life cycle stages are: • raw materials acquisition (exploration, extraction or harvest & refining) • product manufacture (multi-process manufacture, fabrication, assembly) • distribution • product use (use, reuse and maintenance) • waste management or recovery.

23. Life Cycle Assessment LCI Data is not easy to understand

24. Life Cycle Assessment • Assessing the Environmental Impacts • Impact categories can be based on ecological impact 'endpoints' or damages, e.g.: • loss of bio-diversity; • the loss of human life; • death of fish stocks; • or on intermediate effects such as: • toxic releases; • acidification of waterways; or • greenhouse gas emissions.

25. BPIC: Life Cycle Assessment Overview of recommended LCIA midpoint environmental impact categories and BPIC proposed connection to endpoint damage categories (for ISO 14044 compliance).

26. Life Cycle Assessment • LCIA categories: • Relevant environmental indicators and impact categories are chosen for each study including: • Environmental Quality: greenhouse, fresh water aquatic eco-toxicity, marine aquatic eco-toxicity, terrestrial eco-toxicity, photochemical oxidation, acidification and eutrophication; • Human Health: toxicity and other health impacts; • Resource depletion: Abiotic, Fossil Fuel, Farmland, forests, ecosystems etc

27. Life Cycle Assessment • LCIA categories: • Common indicators from recent Australian and US including the European Eco-indicator 99 system: • Human Health: This overall Eco-impact 99 impact category covers health impact on human health based on: • Cancer Mortality from all pollutants; • Combined mortality associated with cancer neurotoxic impacts of mercury, global climate change and particulate matter, measured through disability-adjusted-life-years (DALYs); and • Other toxic risks ranging from mild irritation to possible mortality. (Eco-indicator 99 ref USGCB).

28. Life Cycle Assessment • Human toxicity: • This is a sub-category used in specific instances where the broader issues considered within the overall Human Health impact category is not warranted and “covers the impacts on human health of toxic substances present in the environment”(Guinee et al. 2001). • Ecosystem Quality: • damage to ecosystem quality and is expressed as  percentage of species disappeared in a certain area, due to the environmental load.

29. Life Cycle Assessment • Eco-Toxicity: • Expressed as a percentage of all species in an environment living in toxic stress (Eco-indicator 99): • Fresh water aquatic eco-toxicity: refers to the impacts of toxic substances on freshwater aquatic ecosystems. • Marine aquatic eco-toxicity: covers the impacts of toxic substances on marine aquatic eco-systems. • Terrestrial eco-toxicity: This impact category refers to the impacts of toxic substances on terrestrial ecosystems.

30. Life Cycle Assessment • Greenhouse (Global Warming Potential): • Usually evaluated on a 20, 100 or 500 year time-scale. • The most commonly used time-scale is 100 years; • values given in kg CO2 equivalent (kgCO2e) • Ozone Depletion Potential: • covers the ozone depletion of compounds such as refrigerants, blowing agents and other gases; • Solid Waste generation: • covers the solid waste from production and/or reprocessing;

31. Life Cycle Assessment • Photochemical oxidation (Smog): • the formation of reactive organic substances that can damage human and ecosystem health. • Eutrophication: • covers all potential impacts of excessively high environmental levels of macronutrients, especially nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems – is sometimes split

32. Life Cycle Assessment • Land use and land transformation: • based on empirical data of occurrence of vascular plants as a function of land use types and area size; • both local damage on occupied or transformed area and regional damage on ecosystems are taken into account (Eco-indicator 99).

33. Life Cycle Assessment • Resource depletion: (including Abiotic depletion): • “Abiotic resources are natural resources (including energy resources) such as iron ore, crude oil and wind energy, which are regarded as non-living. Abiotic resource depletion is one of the most frequently discussed impact categories and there is consequently a wide variety of methods available for characterising contributions to this category” (Guinee et al. 2001).

34. Life Cycle Assessment • Fossil Fuel depletion: • covers the reduction of non-renewable fuels; • Water Use: • covers the embodied water used and sent to waste during all stages of production. • Embodied Energy: • covers the depletion of energy reserves and is directly related to greenhouse gas emissions. • likely to be split in future so the issue would be considered under Fossil Duel Depletion (Resource depletion) and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Ecological Quality) separately.

35. Life Cycle Assessment • Interpreting the outcomes • Should analyse the data against project scope and goals; • often scope might need to be modified due to lack of data or particular results • iterative process and several rounds of assessment are often need to get to a final outcome.

36. Life Cycle Assessment • Interpretation of LCA is a specialist job in its own right: • The various models and assessment approaches can be quite complex and even once inventories are fully quantified and impacts assessed interpreting the outcomes in a way that is relevant to every day building industry practitioners not always straightforward

37. Life Cycle Assessment “Disability-adjusted life years lost”, or DALYs is widely used for aggregating mortality and morbidity (health status impairment) impacts

38. Life Cycle Assessment • LCIA data is often presented in form of an EPD: • Overarching standard for EPDs is ISO 14025; • Specific Building Product EPD standards in use include: • ISO 21930 and increasingly EN 15804

39. Global GreenTag is an EPD program Operator- Cradle to Fate scope- ISO 14025 EPD Compliant;- ISO 21930 and EN18504 on request) + Product Report including:- Green Building Rating Tool Credit compliance; - Building Synergy report GreenTag EPD & Green Star Report Mockup Sample Only

40. Life Cycle Assessment Standards for inventory data in Australia: • Even given the ISO Standards, international literature contains varying terminology for inventory entries, and different levels of grouping (aggregation) of emissions (such as VOC, Cx, Hy and heavy metals) which make comparison and interpretation difficult.

41. BPIC LCI Protocol • How to Use BPLCI correctly • Use in compliance with the protocol is a condition of use of the data • BUT this should not be onerous for responsible users • Protocol provides a useful checklist for good practice

42. BPIC LCI Protocol • Comply with relevant international standards – ISO 14040, ISO 14044, ISO 14045, ISO 14048, ISO 14020, ISO 14024, ISO 14025 and ISO 21930. Note: the BPIC data must not be used for Type 2 environmental product declarations. • Use LCI data that complies with the requirements of the BPIC/LCI Methodology Guidelines. • Define appropriate goals, scopes, functional units and timescales of assessment for the materials, products, assemblies • Take appropriate account for the operational implications of the alternatives being assessed over the longest life of the alternatives being compared. • Use appropriate climate data for the location being considered

43. Overview of the BP LCI Protocol Take appropriate account of: • Transport consistent with the declared goal, scope and system boundary • The different building or planning code requirements • The life of the materials, products,…. • The cleaning and maintenance implications of the ….products or materials being assessed as appropriate to the goal and scope of the study and the functional unit. • Any degradation in performance of all of the buildings, elements, assemblies, products or materials being assessed. • The end of life implications of all of the buildings, elements, assemblies, products or materials being assessed.

44. Overview of the BP LCI Protocol Stay up-to-date by using the latest published versions of all sources used. Any data that is not derived from the BPIC database should be validated by peer review by a third party reviewer …. the validation should be published with the study results. Where used, classification, characterisation, normalisation and weighting should use the most up-to-date set of data published or referenced in the life cycle environmental impact companion report published with this Protocol. Where a comparative assertion is to be made public, the study must be subject to a critical review to ensure compliance with ISO 14044.

45. Overview of the AusLCI

46. Overview of AusLCI AusLCI Business Plan 2008 - Deloitte Vision: To be recognised as Australia’s most trusted and complete benchmark LCI data source to enable comparable LCA analysis of products, services and industries. To support this AusLCI must: • be widely recognised as providing a ‘public good’, • develop LCI to a stage where best practice corporate governance includes the development and contribution of LCI data to AusLCI. • Install & utilise transparentprocesses • include robust internal governance and operational processes

47. AusLCI • methodologies • databases and tools • protocols • quality assurance AusLCI – Key Requirements Consistent • methodology, • processes & protocols • documentation ‘a level playing field’ Clear & transparent: • Data sources • Assumptions • Boundaries

48. AusLCI • methodologies • databases and tools • protocols • quality assurance ICIP Grant AusLCI – Nationally Coordinated Approach Aim to provide a single national repository of Australian LCI information

49. Life Cycle Assessment Lack of Australian LC Impact Assessment models (particularly biodiversity): • models needed that reflect both the physical and political attributes of the Australian situation not EU or US • Australia Life Cycle Inventory project (AusLCI 2007) has commenced a development process aimed at creating an Australian biodiversity LCIA approach

50. Life Cycle Assessment ecospecifier’s Assessment Criteria for Verified Product listings are based around these LCI categories using life cycle thinking….but considers them from an outcomes point of view and readily identified features that refer back to the LCI category effects.