1 post tagged “lifecycle assessment”

This is my first post, so be gentle.

On 26 Nov 2007, I attended part of the Sustainable Building meeting held at York University and run by the Canadian Standards Association.  Here's a few notes and ideas from that session.

Note: Any problems in these notes are errors on my part and do not reflect errors of the presenters or organizers or the meeting.

Interesting links:

• ISO 21930: sustainability in building construction - environmental declaration of building products
• peakoil.ie: association for the study of peak oil & gas, Ireland
• SBTool 07: a downloadable tool designed to assess the environmental and sustainability performance of buildings
• MSGB v2.0: Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (downloadable) - based on requirements & recommendations, not on a certification/rating system.
  
• Green Building Initiative: "a not for profit organization whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of building practises that result in energy-efficient, healthier and environmentally sustainable buildings by promoting credible and practical green building approaches for residential and commercial construction." This American initiative is entirely web-based, and some regionalization is possible.
• Athena Institute: has downloadable spreadsheet tools for lifecycle assessment. (Canada)
• EcoAction: site connecting business with environmentalism, sustainability, etc. (Canada)
  

• Regionalization was noted as a pressing, but entirely unresolved issue.
• Design for disassembly of buildings is generally seen as a radical idea, even though its quite commonplace in many kinds of engineering.  Perhaps "they" should be talking to "us" engineers about that more?
• Material selection is largely a matter of "trade-offs" between different characteristics.  However, the standard behaviour these days seems still based on treating a single characteristic as the only one that matters.  Again, this kind of trade-off analysis is something very well understood in other areas of engineering.
• A significant question at the government level seems to be whether to adopt a rating system or a standards approach.  I wonder why not a standard based on a rating system and get the best of both worlds?
• There was also some discussion about how standards can/should be adapted.  Obviously some adaptation can be necessary.  I think the solution is the need for frameworks or even meta-standards to guide the adaptation process.
• A lifecycle inventory database is an (usually) online system that provides the "raw" data needed to perform lifecycle analyses.  The US and Switzerland have them; there may be one in Japan too.  Canada does not have one.  Here's something an SDI could work on?  Try this google search to find out more about these things.