| dc.description.abstract | Energy and material use associated with buildings causes significant environmental impacts which need to be urgently reduced, especially in emerging economies such as Brazil, whose building stock is expected to significantly grow in the following years. Office buildings are typically characterized by higher energy use than residential buildings, yet they have relatively poor coverage in research. So far, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the possible range of climate change impacts caused by Brazilian office buildings.
Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the carbon footprint of Brazilian office buildings. Building archetype definition serves as a basis for the model, which included 10 variable parameters (e.g. city and ventilation mode). To fully explore the possible combinations of these parameters' values, Latin hypercube sampling was performed. The selected buildings were simulated in building energy software in order to estimate their energy performance. The building model that was used during energy simulations was integrated with material composition data to properly reflect energy-material interactions. Further, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study enabled to estimate GWP100 impacts of the sampled buildings. The analysis included building life cycle stages associated with material production and transport (A1-A4), construction (A5), replacement (B4), operational energy use (B6) and end-of-life stage (C).
The results of the model have shown variations in the total GWP values from 20 to 108 kg CO2-eq/m2/year, with the biggest contribution from operational energy use phase. The GWP impacts are also influenced by emissions associated with initial and recurrent material demand, both dominated by aluminum. There was also a significant contribution of paint to the replacement emissions.
The most important parameters for GWP impacts were found to be electricity mix, climate, cooling efficiency and window effective opening area (for mixed-mode buildings). Based on these results, recommendations for mitigation strategies are given. | |
