Life Cycle Energy Assessment of a Multi-storey Residential Building

This study presents the findings of life cycle energy assessment of two multi-storey residential buildings. These buildings consist of a total of 60 homes. The usable floor area is 43.14 m2 (463.36 ft2) per home. A detailed estimation of embodied energy is carried out by considering the use of materials during building construction. Major contributors of embodied energy are found to be steel, cement and aluminum. Monthly building operation energy was assessed using a total of 2520 data samples corresponding to 3 years of building operation. Analysis of a base case scenario, with 50 years of service life and average monthly operation energy, indicates that the embodied energy and the operation energy account for 16 and 84% of the life cycle energy respectively. Sensitivity analysis is carried out to study the influence of service life and operation energy on the relative contribution of embodied energy and operation energy. It is found that the embodied energy represents as high as 31% of the life cycle energy depending upon the variation in the operation energy and the service life. Hence, strategies towards sustainable building construction should also focus on reducing the embodied energy in the design and construction phases in addition to operation energy.