Abstract
Energy savings in the use phase of a building’s life cycle increased the relative importance of environmental impacts of the product-, construction- and end-of-life stages of a building. The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) thus developed horizontal standards to enable the sustainability assessment of construction works over their entire life cycle. Consistent with the European standards EN 15804, EN 15978 and EN 16485, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to determine the environmental impacts of the production and construction stages of an average prefabricated timber house produced in Germany as well as its particular building elements (1 m² inner/outer wall, 1 m² roof element, 1 m² ceiling element). The life cycle inventories (LCIs) were compiled on the basis of annual data of 12 participating manufacturers of prefabricated timber houses. A specific LCA model was developed for the calculation of the input- and output flows referring to the functional units on factory level. Furthermore, one focus was laid on the application of the modular principle according to EN 15804/15978 to construction systems with a high level of prefabrication. The normalization to the overall German impacts shows that the contributions to the environmental categories global warming potential (GWP), acidification (AP) and to the abiotic depletion potential (ADPe) are most important. The highest impacts originate from the manufacturing of the building materials. However, for the categories GWP and AP, around 30% of the impacts originate from the prefabrication of the building elements, their transport and the processes at the construction site.
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Achenbach, H., Wenker, J.L. & Rüter, S. Life cycle assessment of product- and construction stage of prefabricated timber houses: a sector representative approach for Germany according to EN 15804, EN 15978 and EN 16485. Eur. J. Wood Prod. 76, 711–729 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00107-017-1236-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00107-017-1236-1