Environmental impacts of materials in masonry residential house

Abstract

This study aims to quantify the environmental impact of a specific family home, with a particular focus on its contribution to climate change. To achieve a more precise assessment, the family home was dissected into various components based on the materials’ function and their location within the structure. The evaluation was conducted using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, considering the “cradle to site” boundaries and utilizing the IPCC GWP100 method. The cumulative contribution of the materials used in the selected house to climate change was found to be 125,000 kg CO2 equivalent (CO2eq). When analyzing the global warming potentials (GWP100) of individual building structures, the calculated values ranged from 3.8 to 62.2 kg CO2eq. The results indicate that the materials for horizontal structures had the lowest global warming potential values, while materials for vertical structures had the highest values. Particular attention was paid to comparing three different ways of transporting materials to the site. The portion of climate change attributable to transportation fell within a range of 10.9–12.3%. Findings verified that road transportation consistently made the greatest contribution to the overall GWP100, regardless of distance, with rail transportation yielding the lowest values. Discrepancies between the highest and lowest values of transport-related GWP100 were determined to be as much as 9.1%. Opting for the most environmentally friendly option, namely rail in this study, could result in savings of 4.9 kg CO2eq per 1 km of transportation distance for the analyzed building materials used per family house.