A Review of Residential Buildings’ Sustainability Performance Using a Life Cycle Assessment Approach

Abstract

Achieving sustainable buildings is a challenging task. Building sustainability involves “green building” design and construction, taking account of both environmental elements and economic benefits, along with social obligations to the society we live in. This article aims to critically review and analyse studies of the building and construction industry that deal with aspects of sustainability, including environmental life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social life cycle assessment and cleaner production strategies, and to examine the research gaps in order to generate recommendations for further research. About 807 refereed research articles on residential buildings published over the last 10 years (2009–2019), were downloaded, having been searched from online databases (including Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Compendex) using keywords. Building materials, embodied energy and operating energy were found to contribute chiefly to the environmental and socio-economic objectives of the construction industry. Many studies covered only the life cycle tools (such as environmental life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, and social lifecycle assessment) used in the sustainability assessment process. The “carbon footprint” concept is the most commonly used indicator in building sustainability assessments, underlining the urgent need to deploy more diverse environmental impact categories in order to avoid trade-offs among environmental, social and economic objectives. The social life cycle assessment tool needs a methodological breakthrough to improve its application in the building industry. In most of the studies, only an approximate evaluation of buildings’ service life is the main consideration in life cycle assessments, while the important factor of the quality of the materials used in buildings is often neglected. However, a methodological approach to estimate the service life of structures that considers the durability of different building components would provide a more realistic life cycle assessment. Hence it would be judicious to address the thematic and methodological gaps identified in this paper, thereby optimising the understanding and communication of life cycle outcomes in building sustainability.