A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Tall Buildings With Alternative Structural Systems: Wood vs. Concrete
Date
2017
Authors
Tehrani, Maryam Abolghassem
Froese, Thomas M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
CSCE Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting
Abstract
Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been a useful decision-making tool in sustainable building design, construction and building material selection. LCA can be a valuable tool in early design stages of a project to allow designers to quantify and compare environmental impacts of different building materials as well as after the building is constructed to assess new building material technologies that can inform future projects. Arising from a study of the construction of the world’s tallest mass-timber building in Vancouver, this paper makes a comparison between two different construction technologies, wood and concrete, to understand the environmental benefits and drawbacks of each technology in terms of 9 LCA impact categories. Two 18-storey residential buildings in Vancouver, Canada, were considered for this study, a traditional cast-in-place concrete frame building and a mass-timber hybrid design using glulam and CLT. The scope of this study was limited to the assessment of foundations, structures, floors, columns, beams, and roofs. Floor plans, elevation views and material quantities were obtained from construction drawings and were entered into LCA software (Athena’s Impact Estimator) to obtain the two buildings’ LCA results. These indicated that in 8 of the 9 impact categories, the wood building had lower environmental impacts and in 1 impact category (total primary energy) the concrete building had lower environmental impact. The variation of the results of this study with other LCA studies is considered to be due to different building types, location, system boundary, scope of the study, variation in wood construction techniques, and different LCA methodology. This study was conducted as part of a course project and acts as a placeholder study for a more detailed LCA in the future.
Description
Leadership in Sustainable Infrastructure/Leadership en Infrastructures Durables
Vancouver, Canada
May 31 – June 3, 2017/ Mai 31 – Juin 3, 2017
Keywords
Citation
Abolghassem Tehrani, M. & Froese, T.M. (2017). A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Tall Buildings With Alternative Structural Systems: Wood vs. Concrete. Paper presented at CSCE Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting, Vancouver, B.C. https://www.xcdsystem.com/csce/proceedings2017/CONSPEC/FinalPaper_205.pdf