Abstract—In order to design sustainable and environmental friendly buildings, the impacts of the building on environment through its life cycle must be analyzed. Life cycle assessment is the best method to achieve this purpose. However, design and construction of office buildings is often not conducted with an assessment of life cycle environmental impacts. This paper presents a framework to assess the environmental emissions of office building through its life cycle stages which are: raw materials acquisition and manufacturing, construction, use / reuse / maintenance and end-of-life (recycle / waste management). The Environmental impact measured in Primary Energy (MJ), Solid Waste (Kg), Air Emission (index), Water Emissions (index), Global Warming Potential(GWP) (Kg) and Weighted Resource Use. Life cycle assessment framework of this study applied to an eight story office building in Canada. Then to observe the performance of the life cycle assessment method of the present study, alternatives to the base office building components are explored. The pre-cast concrete substituted with base office building floor and tilt up concrete with wall components. For the envelope components, triple glazed windows have been chosen to substitute with the windows of the base office. The results showed that the pre-cast and Tilt-up office Building had less impact on environment.
Index Terms—Life cycle assessment; office building; sustainability; environmental indicators.
F. A. Amin Ganjidoost is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1 Canada (e-mail: aganjido@uwaterloo.ca).
S. A. Sabah Alkass is a Professor in the Dept. of Building, Civil and
Environmental Engineering at the Concordia University, Montreal, QC
Canada (e-mail:alkass@bcee.concordia.ca).
Cite: Amin Ganjidoost and Sabah Alkass, "Environmental Life Cycle Analysis of Office Buildings in Canada," International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 602-606, 2012.
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