Carbon Footprint Estimation for Academic Building in India
67
demolition of a building is not a common process and it is a future and unpredictable
task. Also, many buildings may go for reconstruction and modifications to upgrade
its duration of its life cycle instead of demolition. In the present case study, demolition phase of the building is excluded and analysis is carried out with construction
and operational phase of the building. All collected data related with construction
and operational phase of the building are used to find the emissions associated with
the selected building using GaBi Education software. Figure 7 shows the results in
terms of emissions associated with the selected building.
5 Discussion
It can be noticed from the present analysis that buildings have considerable share
in releasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The Global Warming Potential
(GWP) related to various construction materials, primary energy input, electricity
associated with the studied building is estimated. The total value of GWP comes
out to be 1.59 × 10
6 kg-CO 2eq . Out of which the manufacturing of cement using
in building construction has the biggest share with 6.63 kg-CO 2eq , which is then
followed by thermal energy required in manufacturing of bricks. Figure 7 shows the
emissions associate with the building in air, freshwater, sea water, agriculture soil and
industrial soil. It can be seen by the figure that the building affects the freshwater the
most with total emissions of 1.27 × 10
9 kg/m
3 , which is then followed by emissions
to air and emissions to sea water. These results indicate that the consumption of
large quantity of resources, energy, operational electrical energy in a building have
significant impacts to the atmosphere in terms of GHG emissions.
The results obtained from the present analysis are also compared with other
previous studies. Table 1 shows some studies available on LCA of educational buildings carried out by various researchers summarized with the present study. Scheuer
et al. estimated emissions associated with a university building per unit floor area
[22]. Arena and Rosa analyzed impacts associated with a school building in Argentina
in terms of GWP, photo smog, resources consumption etc. per unit area of considered refurbishment technique [1]. Ozawa-Meida et al. estimated carbon footprint for
a university building in UK considering internal area without construction [18]. In
2012, Varun et al. studied an academic building and calculated GHG emissions per
unit usable floor area [29]. Isasa et al. estimated GHG emissions for a building in
Spain/Portugal per unit acclimatized area for use phase [8]. In fact, it is difficult to
compare all these studies as every study has different scope and boundary conditions. There are many variations in the methodologies and functional unit used in
these studies. Many of them have not used any software to perform the LCA. As LCA
may be seen as a complex and time consuming technique as a lot of data collections,
calculations and their processing is to be done. Advent of software to perform LCA
makes it simpler and realistic but along with this proper data and record keeping is
quite essential to obtain more useful results. Due to lack of ample details of materials
used in construction process, unavailability of on-site data is a big problem during the
67
demolition of a building is not a common process and it is a future and unpredictable
task. Also, many buildings may go for reconstruction and modifications to upgrade
its duration of its life cycle instead of demolition. In the present case study, demolition phase of the building is excluded and analysis is carried out with construction
and operational phase of the building. All collected data related with construction
and operational phase of the building are used to find the emissions associated with
the selected building using GaBi Education software. Figure 7 shows the results in
terms of emissions associated with the selected building.
5 Discussion
It can be noticed from the present analysis that buildings have considerable share
in releasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The Global Warming Potential
(GWP) related to various construction materials, primary energy input, electricity
associated with the studied building is estimated. The total value of GWP comes
out to be 1.59 × 10
6 kg-CO 2eq . Out of which the manufacturing of cement using
in building construction has the biggest share with 6.63 kg-CO 2eq , which is then
followed by thermal energy required in manufacturing of bricks. Figure 7 shows the
emissions associate with the building in air, freshwater, sea water, agriculture soil and
industrial soil. It can be seen by the figure that the building affects the freshwater the
most with total emissions of 1.27 × 10
9 kg/m
3 , which is then followed by emissions
to air and emissions to sea water. These results indicate that the consumption of
large quantity of resources, energy, operational electrical energy in a building have
significant impacts to the atmosphere in terms of GHG emissions.
The results obtained from the present analysis are also compared with other
previous studies. Table 1 shows some studies available on LCA of educational buildings carried out by various researchers summarized with the present study. Scheuer
et al. estimated emissions associated with a university building per unit floor area
[22]. Arena and Rosa analyzed impacts associated with a school building in Argentina
in terms of GWP, photo smog, resources consumption etc. per unit area of considered refurbishment technique [1]. Ozawa-Meida et al. estimated carbon footprint for
a university building in UK considering internal area without construction [18]. In
2012, Varun et al. studied an academic building and calculated GHG emissions per
unit usable floor area [29]. Isasa et al. estimated GHG emissions for a building in
Spain/Portugal per unit acclimatized area for use phase [8]. In fact, it is difficult to
compare all these studies as every study has different scope and boundary conditions. There are many variations in the methodologies and functional unit used in
these studies. Many of them have not used any software to perform the LCA. As LCA
may be seen as a complex and time consuming technique as a lot of data collections,
calculations and their processing is to be done. Advent of software to perform LCA
makes it simpler and realistic but along with this proper data and record keeping is
quite essential to obtain more useful results. Due to lack of ample details of materials
used in construction process, unavailability of on-site data is a big problem during the