Top 10 Structural Sustainability FAQs Answered by LCA

Despite the wealth of information now available about using life cycle assessment (LCA) as a sustainable design tool, straightforward answers to some basic questions can be difficult to find. The SEI Sustainability Committee’s LCA working group has prepared answers to ten of the most frequently asked questions by conscientious structural engineers.

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Below you will find nine questions, worded most closely to what a structural engineer might ask. Members of the LCA working group have answered them as succinctly as possible to improve clarity on the topic. Resources are also provided to deepen understanding.  You may be surprised to find yourself steered to altogether different questions, and the answers to them also.  Within each response we keep the structural engineer in mind, answering: “so what does this mean for you?”

Please check this website throughout the month of April as the LCA working group posts the responses to a few new questions each week leading up to the 2013 Structures Congress.

The final question will be determined by vote or submitted by a reader like you. Review the questions below and consider if we missed something. Use the comment feature on this page to propose a question. One question will be chosen soon after Structures Congress to receive top billing on this blog. Other pertinent questions will be answered at a later date.

The 10 FAQs are:

1. Which is better - steel or concrete?  
2. What are some of the most effective things I can do as a structural engineer?
3. a) How do embodied impacts compare to operational?; b) Reducing operational Energy
4. How much of total embodied comes from structure?  
5. Does it matter if I use LCA data from different sources?
6. How much do things seen in LEED (recycled content, local sourcing, etc.) matter? 
7. What’s the difference between embodied energy and embodied carbon?  Can I just scale embodied carbon results to embodied energy?  
8. What do the other LCA metrics (besides embodied carbon and embodied energy) mean and how important are they? 
9. What is the environmental impact of seismic damage? How can comprehensive life cycle thinking impact how we design for disasters?  
10. What is better for the environment, building reuse or new construction?

Official Top Ten Bibliography

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2013 Structures Congress Pre-Conferrence Sustainability Sessions

In addition to the sustainability seminars in the main Congress proceedings (see previous post), there is a special pre-conference session of seminars being presented by members of the Structural Engineering Institute's Sustainability Committee. This interactive seminar will give attendees a hands-on experience and overview of the New Essentials that every engineer should have in their Sustainability Tool Kit.

The lineup includes:

• Life Cycle Assessment - How to Decipher and Use LCA on a Project
Speaker: Frances Yang, P.E., LEED AP, Arup
• Disaster Resilience - How to Avoid Unsustainable Rebuilding, Before and After Failures Due to Natural Disasters
Speakers: Matthew Comber, P.E., LEED AP BD+C, Degenkolb Engineers; Lionel Lemay, P.E., S.E., LEED AP, National Ready Mixed Concrete Association
• Thermal Bridging - How to Recognize and Design Around Thermal Bridges
Speakers: Jim D'Aloisio, P.E., SECB, LEED AP BD+D, Klepper, Hahn & Hyatt; Russ Miller-Johnson, P.E., Engineering Ventures
• Infrastructure - What Green Infrastructure Means, and Understanding the Resources Available to Lower the Environmental impact of Infrastructure Projects
Speaker: Marty Chorkey, P.E., ENV PV, St. Louis Mayor's Office

In each session participants will take part in interactive exercises to support the information shared in presentations. Participants will leave the seminar with a functional understanding of the tools and strategies presented and prepared to apply this knowledge on their next project.

A special ticket is required. Early Bird registration was $99 (deadline now past), advance registration $175, and onsite $250. To be added to this seminar, you must check this item's box when registering.

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2013 Structures Congress Sustainability Program

Next year's Structural Engineering Institute convention, a.k.a. the Structures Congress, will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 2-4, 2013. SEI Sustainability Committee member, Adam Slivers, summarized the sustainability sessions for the Structural Engineers Association of Washington blog. The full account is reprinted below.

Two tracks of seminars will feature sustainability, and currently both are scheduled for Saturday morning. Sustainable Building Systems has two series with the following presentations:

 

Green Giants: Tall and Sustainable 

•    Informed Tall Building Design: Considering Embodied Environmental Impacts

•    Achieving Enhanced Seismic Design Using Viscous Damping Device Technologies

•    Innovation in Sustainable Engineering: 350 Mission

•    Sustainability Impact of Tall Buildings  

Aesthetics of Sustainable Structures 

•    Sustainable Structures through Morphogenetic Design
Comparing Adaptability - A Case Study of Three Historic Buildings

•    Structure as Aesthetic in Sustainable Design Case Study

•    In the Looking Glass of Sustainable Architecture

•    Structure as Aesthetic in Sustainable Design 

At the same time, Sustainability in Structures has two series with the following presentations:

Sustainable Systems and Materials

•    Specifying Sustainable Concrete: The Role of Performance Based Specifications

•    Long-term Service-Level Deflection Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Beams with Recycled Concrete Aggregates
Sorting Out the LCA Rhetoric: A Comparison of Life-Cycle Assessment Studies of Structural Systems and Materials

•    Challenges and Solutions in Design of Sustainable Building Structural Systems

•    Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Design: Quantifying the Benefits of a Holistic Design Approach   

Taking Measure of Structural Thermal Breaks

•    A study of the thermal performance of structural details using THERM

•    Use of Infrared Imaging to Identify Thermal Energy Losses Due To Structural Thermal Bridging

•    Design and Performance of Constructed Thermal Break Connections

•    Experimental investigation of insulated concrete sandwich panels reinforced with GFRP shear connector 

Click the series titles above to see the presentation authors and abstracts. The full technical program is here.

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Plan Now for Greenbuild 2013

Session proposals for Greenbuild 2013 are due this Friday, January 11th.

Greenbuild is the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. This year the conference will be held November 20 through 22 in Philadelphia. Mark your calendars now.

The first Greenbuild conference was held in Austin in 2002 and attended by a little over 4,000 industry experts. Last year’s event in San Fracisco attracted over 24,000 registrants and 862 exhibitors, representing 90 countries. The conference organizers want to share the message that, “Whatever your story, your background or your nationality, you are a citizen of our planet, a citizen of our community, a citizen of Greenbuild Nation. Together we are reaching across borders to build a better tomorrow.”

Follow @Greenbuild on Twitter for updates. Email info@seisustainability.org for details about submitting a session proposal.

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Incorporating Environmental Metrics into Probalistic Seismic Performance

The Applied Technology Council (ATC) has made available for review a 90% draft of the ATC-86 report recommending approaches for incorporating environmental metrics into the ATC-58 probabilistic seismic performance methodology. The SEI Sustainability Committee has been asked to review the 80-page document. SEI-SC will provide comments by December 12th.

The work of implementing the recommendations in the ATC-86 report is funded in part by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

You may inquire about the review process by emailing info@seisustainability.org. Stay tuned for further updates on this interesting work by our member affiliated organization.

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Structure and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate

The Carbon Working Group (CWG) is pleased to announce the release of their white paper titled, Structure and Carbon: How Materials Affect the Climate. CWG is a dedicated and concerned group of engineering professionals with design, industrial, and academic backgrounds. They are united in passion for addressing the causes of climate change today through professional practice.

The intent of this white paper is to serve as a primer on greenhouse gas emissions, the most important of which is carbon dioxide (informally referenced simply as “carbon”), for the structural engineering community and others with an interest in the carbon impacts of structural materials and systems. It explains:

1. Why structural engineers must understand greenhouse gas emissions
2. How the construction of building structural systems contributes to greenhouse gas emissions
3. How we as a profession can help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with structural systems.

Ultimately, the authors hope that this paper will spur actions that will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with building structures. The materials in the built environment are a substantial source of anthropogenic carbon emissions, and structural engineers have unique opportunities to specify materials for construction projects that can significantly affect the contribution of each project to more climate changes.

The choices of structural engineers make a difference. The risk of destructive climate change impacts can be reduced by choosing and using building materials with climate change in mind. This white paper introduces some strategies structural engineers may use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Download the white paper here.

For further information on how to reduce structures' environmental impact, see the SEI Sustainability Committee’s  Sustainability Guidelines for the Structural Engineer (Kestner et al, 2010).

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Carbon Working Group

The purpose of the Carbon Working Group (CWG) is to study the carbon impacts of structural materials and systems and to make recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint of the structural system. The CWG has recently produced a white paper intended primarily for practicing structural engineers that addresses the following topics. Download it here.

1. Explain the importance of carbon and the meaning of carbon equivalents.
2. Describe how, and during which parts of the lifecycle, carbon is embodied in the various primary structural materials (steel, concrete, wood, masonry).
3. Discuss how the engineer can impact the carbon footprint of the structural system and building.
4. Provide examples of carbon calculations comparing baseline cases and improved cases.

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