Evaluation of Life Cycle Energy Consumption and CO 2 Emission of Elementary School of Buildings

Abstract

: This study investigates and analyzes the total amount of energy consumption and CO 2 emission during the material manufacturing, transportation, construction, operation, and disposal phases of eight elementary school buildings in South Korea. Toward this ends, the hybrid LCA model is proposed. The life cycle energy consumption and CO 2 emission of eight case buildings are assessed using the hybrid LCA model with an assumption that the operation period is 40 years. As a result, the embodied(sum of the energy consumption in the material manufacturing, transportation and construction phases), operational and disposal energy were 2,279, 11,182, 228 Mcal/m 2 , respectively, on average. The average embodied, operational, and disposal CO 2 emission were 604, 2,708, 60 kg-CO 2 /m 2 , respectively, on average. This result indicates that about 17% of life cycle energy (or CO 2 emission) is consumed in the material manufacturing, transportation and construction phases. Thus, it is necessary to consider the embodied energy and CO 2 emission to reduce the life cycle energy and CO 2 emission of school buildings. In addition, while the insulation standard of building have been provided based on the climate zone, energy consumption in operation phase still varied depending on the regions in this study. Thus, the insulation standard of building needs to be improved through considering the climate of regions in detail.