The Life CycleAssessment (LCA) Group is working toward educating structural engineers on the
meaning and professional application of LCA criteria, procedures, and
measurements in order to make environmentally conscience decisions on the use
of structural materials.
Life cycle assessment
(LCA) is a method of measuring the total environmental impact of a product or
process, from acquisition of raw materials to end-of-life. For structural materials, the life cycle
generally includes extraction, manufacture, transport, construction,
maintenance, re-use and recycle opportunities and end-of-life including
demolition and disposal. Thus LCA provides the most complete picture of
environmental effects inherent to choosing certain structural materials. It is analogous to performing environmental
accounting on the structural materials in order to choose the most
environmentally friendly design solution over the anticipated standardized life
of such materials.
LCA has four basic
stages or evaluation components; goal and scope definition, inventory analysis,
impact assessment, and interpretation.
The inventory analysis can utilize such catalogs as the U.S. Life-CycleInventory Database prepared by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the
Inventory of Carbon and Energy ('ICE') prepared by the University of Bath. The analysis can be done in software programs
such as Athena Eco-Calculator and the SimaPro.
In addition, some companies are coming out with their own proprietary
software for post processing the data and inventories based upon specific
circumstances.
LCA assessment tools
move beyond simplistic assumptions and determine true environmental
impacts. Measurements of LCA include
multiple metrics including quantifying the environmental ‘costs’ (e.g. CO2emissions) of each item, the energy required to produce the items (embodiedenergy) and various measurements of how these impacts relate to larger scale
environmental concerns (e.g. global climate change)
The main goals of the group include:
1. Providing
information and resources to the structural engineering community on
applications of LCA in building and infrastructure design.
2. Improving LCA software to better
represent environmental impact reductions we know can be made from structural
design and specification.
3. Engaging
structural engineers in the incorporation of LCA into green building and
infrastructure rating systems and building codes.
Currently, the group
is working on publishing their response to the top 10 most encountered
questions, as experienced by LCA Committee members within their practice of
structural engineering.
