Hello,
I am carrying out an LCA for an EU-based project and am confused as to how to establish a baseline to compare improvements in the carbon footprint.
The project is currently at the permit design stage, with a structural design based on preliminary calculations which will be optimised and detailed later.
Would this stage be appropriate to define the baseline building, is a later stage more appropriate? Also, when submitting the project for LEED accreditation, does any justification need to be given as to why the baseline case was chosen?
The software used to calculate the building impact, the modules and impact categories will remain the same.
The option of using existing buildings as a baseline is not possible because this is the first building of its kind in the country.
Thank you!
Camilo Velez
PrincipalSimgea
21 thumbs up
January 31, 2023 - 10:40 am
Hi Cecilia,
Under the Further Explanation for the version 4 of this credit, the guideline explains that as long that you have an equivalent functional design (among other things) you have 4 options for establishing the baseline, and the one that you are describing would fall under the Early Design option.
In our experience for an LCA study to have an actual impact in the project, the earlier you can get into it, and start having results to discuss with the architects and structural, the better, and you can use that initial approach as your early design baseline, to compare with your proposed model, which would be based on the final design.
So far we haven't been required to provide an explanation on why we used one of the baseline options over the other, but it doesn't hurt to have a narrative explaining your reasoning and lack of similar projects to compare with. And I would say that in general there are still not benchmarked databases of different building types to easily compared your project with, so choosing any other of the baseline options is necessary in most cases.
Hope that helps.