Whole building LCA - embodied and operational impacts

Henrique Mendonca

Life Cycle Engineer

eTool

LEEDuser Basic Member

2 thumbs up

May 22, 2014

Let’s suppose a building is designed to use a material that although it has high embodied energy (concrete), it will improve the operational thermal performance due to thermal mass and the overall life cycle result is better. This is the whole of building approach, including both operational and embodied impacts. Will the 10% reduction target include whole building savings, accounting for both embodied and operational impacts?

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Kileigh Shea

Walter P Moore

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Wed, 01/18/2017 - 23:44

Henrique, the credit language requires the building and the baseline building you are comparing to be of comparable operating energy performance. While using concrete as a means of improving the operational performance of the building may be beneficial through the entire life of the building when looking at environmental impacts from both materials and operations, the intent of this credit is to look at the impacts from materials only.