| dc.description.abstract | Many different policy approaches, tools, and methodologies have been implemented in
the quest to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of
different elements of the built environment. The common policy approaches currently in
use addressing these issues in buildings and infrastructure (B&I) focus mainly on
operational energy and GHG emissions while neglecting other life cycle stages. The
assessment methods and schemes that can be used to address the efficacy of these
approaches use a different set of parameters than the policies themselves. Many of these
assessment methodologies have issues that should be resolved or augmented in order to
increase their utility and effectiveness.
An issue often overlooked in policy, but well known to those in the field of industrial
ecology, is that impacts from most products (including B&I) accrue not only during the
operational phase but during the entire life cycle. The impacts that accrue during the
different life cycle stages consist of impacts made by other actors in other sectors and/or
at other times. Focused methodologies such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) attempt to
account for the entire life cycle, yet they often rely on predictions, estimates, and
averages of the past, present, and future. These life cycle stages are then compressed
across time and space, with results presented as one or more synthetic impacts for a
contrived functional unit. At a broader scale, the approaches used to measure and report
current consumption at the global and national levels divide the field along different
boundaries and into different categories, making comparisons of expectations and
results difficult to impossible.
Beyond attempts to reduce energy use and emissions from B&I, the increase in climate
change related hazards around the world is exposing that the narrow focus on efficiency
may be more detrimental than first envisioned. While the promotion of efficiency and
promise of protection have been common approaches to hazards in the past, recent
events have exposed weaknesses in existing tactics. It has also become more apparent
that existing mitigation efforts will be insufficient to prevent some level of climate
change, associated hazards, and impacts. Complete protection against all threats is not
only impossible but potentially hazardous, as extreme or unanticipated events can
exceed the capacity for defense, potentially resulting in catastrophic failures. From this
realization of the fallibility of the existing paradigm, the concept of resilience has
emerged as a potentially useful frame of reference for reconciling the twin goals of
mitigation and adaptation in the built environment.
Through a series of papers, this thesis highlights and analyzes concerns about applying a
life cycle approach to energy and emissions in the built environment, proposes a metrics
and indicator framework designed to facilitate the sectoral tracking of energy and
emissions, and explores resilience as a useful concept for framing the response of cities
to the expanding collection of potential threats. | nb_NO |
