Life-cycle assessment of windows in Israel

Abstract

Life-cycle assessments were conducted to evaluate three window technologies used in an office building in Israel: double-glazed windows with aluminium, wood and polyvinyl chloride frames. The production and replacement, operational energy and recycling and demolition stages were considered. The goal was to examine the effect of the primary fuel source, either natural gas or photovoltaic energy production, for the building’s operational energy needs on the selection of the best window technology. The EnergyPlus software was used to evaluate the operational energy stage, while the Recipe life-cycle assessment method was used to evaluate the environmental damage in all stages. It was found that the best window technology can be selected by considering only the operational energy stage when natural gas is used, whereas both the operational energy and production and replacement stages must be considered when photovoltaic energy is used. The three window frames exhibit no life-cycle assessment differences when natural gas is used, whereas the windows with aluminium and wood frames are the best choices when photovoltaic energy is used. The combination of Recipe with a two-stage, nested, mixed analysis-of-variance model is the optimal approach for evaluating the differences in window technology life-cycle assessments.