LCA-based energy evaluating with application to school buildings in Taiwan

Abstract

The incorporation of environmental and energy considerations into building design becomes the main stream of the construction industry. This research intended to demonstrate the life-cycle inventory technique employed in the analysis of energy consumption during the lifetime of school buildings in Taiwan. There are two popular types of school buildings in Taiwan. One is steel-based construction (hereafter referred to SC). The other is reinforced concrete construction (hereafter referred to RC). There are five stages in the whole life of school buildings including manufacturing, erection, occupation, demolition and disposal. In this study, a 50-year service time was assumed for both buildings. The results show that the most energy consumption occurs in the occupation stage for both selected school buildings. They contribute 95.8% and 87.2% of the total energy consumption in its service time for the SC and RC buildings, respectively. It also concluded that both selected buildings consumed lots of energy during the first 30 years, and then energy consumptions of the selected school buildings was leveled off. A study of improving shading design was found that the selected SC school building with a shading board could save 29% of energy during its service time, whereas it only saved 13% for the RC building. An uncertainty analysis using the Monte Carlo simulation was also conducted in the study. The data were presented in the means and 95% confidential intervals.