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LCA Green Building credits
Life Cycle Assessment credits in Green Building certification schemes (LEED, BREEAM, and more)Life Cycle Assessment Green Building credits
Can I use Life Cycle Assessment to get credits for my Green Building certification system?
We often get asked this question and usually the answer is that yes, you can use LCA for Green Building credits in most certification schemes around the world.
More and more of Green Building certification systems have understood the importance of reducing the emissions of a building over its whole life cycle, which is what the Life Cycle Assessment methodology is for, and they have included credits that require performing building life cycle analysis to calculate the embodied carbon and other environmental impacts as well as Life Cycle Cost.
If you are not sure what Building Life Cycle Assessment is and why it matters, you can read our guide here.
However, this doesn’t mean that all certification schemes approach Life Cycle-based credits in the same way. We have also noticed that sometimes green building professionals are hesitant to try these new credits, as they are not sure what it is required in order to achieve them and how the Life Cycle Assessment methodology applies.
If you would like to find out how LCA Green Building credits keep on reading and find out in detail what they entail.
The basics of LCA credits
Let’s start with the basic terminology. When you look at LCA Green Building credits you will likely see mentions of Life cycle assessment (LCA), embodied carbon, carbon footprint, and whole building impact assessment.
Basically all these terms refer to the same thing: analyzing the environmental impacts of a building.
Building Life Cycle Assessment is the methodology used to quantify the environmental impacts of a building over it whole life time. While performing this analysis, the environmental emissions of different stages of building life time are measured, from raw material extraction to materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling.
How are environmental impacts measured? For instance, in the case of global warming potential (also known as carbon footprint or embodied carbon) the equivalence unit is based on carbon dioxide and how much heat 1 kg of CO2 can trap in the atmosphere (radiative forcing). All the other emissions are transformed into CO2 equivalents based on their radiative forcing.
When applied to the design process, Life Cycle Assessment enables design teams to learn already in the design phase how many emissions their building will cause through its whole life time. This way designers can identify the cause of most of the emissions and make some changes to their design in order to reduce them. For example, an architect might select a different insulation material for their design, or make some design choices to increase energy efficiency based on local climate conditions.
To produce standardized results, the methodology needs to follow specific standards, like EN 15978 and ISO 14040/44 standards.
Want to learn more about the relation between carbon footprint and climate change? Read our article here.
Green Building LCA credits in LEED v4
LEED v4 BD+C, MR credit: Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction, option 4 Whole building life-cycle assessment
The baseline building must have the same size, function, orientation, and energy performance but other elements may be changed.
Which life cycle stages must be included in the analysis?
Which environmental impacts does the credit take into account?
- Global Warming Potential describes how much a product contributes to climate change. When LCA concerns only this impact category, it’s called the carbon footprint
- Acidification describes how much product acidifies the environment, resulting e.g. acid rain
- Eutrophication describes flow of nutrients to ecosystems, resulting e.g. to algae growth
- Ozone Depletion describes damage caused to the Ozone Layer in the stratosphere
- Tropospheric Ozone describes the quantity of summer smog causing gases emitted
- Depletion of non-renewable energy resources describes how much fossil resources are withdrawn.
The impact assessment methodology (defines units and the method for emission calculations) can be CML (used in EN standards), ReCiPe or TRACI.
What type of data can be used?
What is the building’s service life standard?
Which software tools can be used for LEED?
Green Building LCA credits in BREEAM schemes
BREEAM Mat 01 Life cycle impacts credit and other Material credits
In the case of BREEAM the LCA related credits have clearly been growing in importance over the past years. Depending on the scheme , LCA and LCC related credits can now provide you up to 20 credits.
However, to understand how LCA is used in BREEAM we’ll have to take a closer look at different BREEAM schemes as they have different requirements.
BREEAM Intl (2013/2016), BREEAM Espana and BREEAM NOR New Construction schemes
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Which life cycle stages must be included in the analysis?
Which environmental impacts does the credit take into account?
What type of data can be used?
What is the building’s service life standard?
Which software tools can be used for BREEAM?
One Click LCA has been approved for all of the schemes discussed here with the highest potential quality rating so by choosing our software you have already earned 70 % of the credit potential. As the limit for the maximum credits is 85% this means that you’ll only have to achieve 15% by adding different building elements. In practice this means that you’ll have some freedom to choose which of the optional building elements you wish to include in the calculations and you’ll still be able to achieve the maximum credits.
Mat 01 Life cycle impacts credits in different BREEAM systems
| BREEAM SCHEME | Credit name | Credits |
| BREEAM Int’l NC 2016 | Mat 01 | 5 +1 |
| BREEAM Int’l NC 2013 | Mat 01 | 6 +1 |
| BREEAM NOR NC 2016, Option Life cycle impacts * | Mat 01 | 2 +1 (+2) |
| BREEAM ES NC 2015 | Mat 01 | 6 + 1 |
| BREEAM ES Vivienda | Mat 01 | 5 +1 |
* BREEAM NOR also includes another life cycle assessment based option on Mat 01 definition which is “Reduction of Green House gas emissions”, worth 2 credits. The idea of this option is to be able to reduce the life cycle impacts of the building compared to a baseline.
Want to learn more about BREEAM LCA credits? Read our guide here.
BREEAM Retrofit and Fit-out
| BREEAM Int’l RFO 2015 | Mat 01 | 6 + 1 |
| BREEAM Int’l RFO 2014 | Mat 01 | 6 + 1 |
BREEAM UK new construction (2011 /2014)
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Often a good way to show the progress is to compare a few different design options. Results have to be reported in specified way separately for each data point.
Which life cycle stages must be included in the analysis?
Which environmental impacts does the credit take into account?
What type of data can be used?
What is the building’s service life standard?
Which software tools can be used for BREEAM UK?
- IMPACT Compliant tools use that database and its rules for the calculations for the calculations.
- IMPACT Equivalent tools have been verified to have equivalent quality compared to the IMPACT Compliant tool. IMPACT Equivalent tools may provide manufacturer specific datasets based on Environmental product declarations.
One Click LCA has both an IMPACT compliant and an IMPACT equivalent tool: The IMPACT Equivalent tool uses material manufacturer specific environmental product declarations while the IMPACT Compliant one uses the IMPACT database.
Additionally, the IMPACT Equivalent tool focuses on the mandatory credit scope of the materials’ embodied carbon impacts, providing easily understandable results, while the IMPACT Compliant tool will include a comprehensive life cycle assessment with multiple environmental impact categories and very detailed results.
Green Building LCA credits in other certification schemes
LCA credits are used in other Green Building certification schemes, like CEEQUAL and national certifications like DGNB, DK-DGNB, Energie Carbone, and others. We will update this article with more certification schemes and a breakdown of the LCA credits in all of them.
Want to learn more about LCA credits? Join our of our free webinars!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 711303.
