Single Score Environmental Performances of Roof Coverings

Abstract

Buildings and constructions are responsible for a great amount of global energy and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Because of these negative impacts, there is an increase in Life cycle assessment research in the construction sector to measure these effects and evaluate the sustainability performances. Life cycle assessment is a tool that can facilitate the decision-making process in the construction sector for material selection, or for the selection of the best environmentally friendly option in the building component level or building level. In this study, a comparative life cycle assessment analysis is conducted among 12 roof coverings of 1 square meter in the 60-year lifetime of a building. Impact categories that are available in environmental product declarations and included in this study are the global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, abiotic depletion potential of non-fossils and abiotic depletion potential of fossils resources. To facilitate the decision-making process, panel and monetary weightings are applied to convert environmental product declaration data of seven impact categories into one single-score. Monetary weightings applied in the study are in Euro 2019, differentiating itself from other comparative life cycle assessment studies. The single-score results are ranked and compared. R04 has the best performance for all panel weightings, while for monetary weightings, R03, R07 and R08 have the best performance for EPS, MMG and EVR, respectively. As a result, for 12 roof coverings, the weighted results could not address one single roof-covering material for numerous reasons. Among the weighting methods, panel weighting sets show more similarity in ranking results, while monetary-weighting sets results are more diverse.