Publication detail

Life-Cycle Assessment of a Rural Terraced House: A Struggle with Sustainability of Building Renovations

STRUHALA, K. OSTRÝ, M.

Original Title

Life-Cycle Assessment of a Rural Terraced House: A Struggle with Sustainability of Building Renovations

Type

journal article in Web of Science

Language

English

Original Abstract

Contemporary research stresses the need to reduce mankind’s environmental impacts and achieve sustainability. One of the keys to this is the construction sector. New buildings have to comply with strict limits regarding resource consumption (energy, water use, etc.). However, they make up only a fraction of the existing building stock. Renovations of existing buildings are therefore essential for the reduction of the environmental impacts in the construction sector. This paper illustrates the situation using a case study of a rural terraced house in a village near Brno, Czech Republic. It compares the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the original house and its proposed renovation as well as demolition followed by new construction. The LCA covers both the initial embodied environmental impacts (EEIs) and the 60-year operation of the house with several variants of energy sources. The results show that the proposed renovation would reduce overall environmental impacts (OEIs) of the house by up to 90% and the demolition and new construction by up to 93% depending on the selected energy sources. As such, the results confirm the importance of renovations and the installation of environmentally-friendly energy sources for achieving sustainability in the construction sector. They also show the desirability of the replacement of inefficient old buildings by new construction in specific cases

Keywords

Building renovation; environmental impacts; energy efficiency, energy sources; Life-Cycle Assessment; sustainable construction

Authors

STRUHALA, K.; OSTRÝ, M.

Released

26. 4. 2021

Publisher

MDPI

Location

Switzerland

ISBN

1996-1073

Periodical

ENERGIES

Year of study

14

Number

9

State

Swiss Confederation

Pages from

1

Pages to

18

Pages count

18

URL

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/9/2472/htm

Full text in the Digital Library

http://hdl.handle.net/11012/196759

BibTex

@article{BUT171014,
  author="Karel {Struhala} and Milan {Ostrý}",
  title="Life-Cycle Assessment of a Rural Terraced House: A Struggle with Sustainability of Building Renovations",
  journal="ENERGIES",
  year="2021",
  volume="14",
  number="9",
  pages="1--18",
  doi="10.3390/en14092472",
  issn="1996-1073",
  url="https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/9/2472/htm"
}