Environmental lifecycle impact assessment for CULTURAL-E climate and cultural based solution sets

The situation reported from the Global Status Report 2021 and the now war-related
risks urge the application of measures for decreasing emissions and energy consumption, aiming
carbon neutrality by 2050. Smart solutions for decreasing energy consumption are researched
and implemented in the context of energy efficient buildings and Plus Energy Houses (PEHs).
As PEHs gained an increasing consideration for the challenge of energy consumption reduction,
their design produced a multitude of solutions. In such a multitude, an optimum is defined by
accounting and comparing the performance offered by provided technologies and the actual
technical requirements. The latter can be affected by the geographical/climate context as well as
the user behaviour and socio-cultural aspects. This objective has been addressed in the
CULTURAL-E research framework. Furthermore, in compliance with the current climate
targets, this framework attributes a central role to the environmental performance of systems
designed for PEHs. In this work, environmental impacts’ investigations of solution sets for PEHs
are provided according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The developed
bottom-up approach provides lifecycle information hierarchically on three levels (component,
solution sets and PEH), while information of operation energy is derived through building energy
simulations and average user-related energy usage. The selected 8 case studies are drawn from
the CULTURAL-E research and include solution sets tailored for climate and socio-cultural
clusters. Innovative technological components as well as conventional technologies are included.
Based on such analyses, an environmental (CO2) payback periods have been estimated, i.e., the
time required to recoup the total expended embodied CO2 through building operation carbon
positivity. Results identified potentials for climate mitigation and different performance levels
of the implemented technologies and photovoltaics systems, especially for countries in which a
faster shift to renewable energy sources is needed for meeting the 2050’s environmental targets.