Quantitative research on embodied carbon emissions in the design stage: a case study from an educational building in China

Abstract

Achieving low carbon emissions in buildings has a critical impact on controlling global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. With the boom in educational buildings, especially those with reinforced concrete structures, carbon emissions from such buildings are brought to the fore. Among building carbon emissions, embodied carbon emissions are closely related to building structure and materials. This paper aims to study the embodied carbon emissions of a Chinese educational building in the design stage with a quantitative method – process-based life cycle assessment, summarizing the carbon emission characteristics of construction materials and proposing corresponding optimization methods. The results indicate that local data of emission factors is preferred for calculating the embodied carbon emissions and the number of construction materials could be obtained through design estimates; that embodied carbon emissions from material manufacturing are much higher than those from material transportation; that steel and concrete are the two most carbon-emitting materials in the reinforced concrete frame structure educational building; and that using local and reused materials are the two main low-carbon optimization measures, with carbon emission reduction contribution rates of 19.7% and 80.3%, respectively, which reused and recycled construction materials should be considered a priority in reducing the embodied carbon emissions of buildings.

Keywords

• embodied carbon emissions
• reinforced concrete frame structure
• educational buildings
• process-based life cycle assessment
• low-carbon design