Footprint Evaluation of Household Operation Accounting for the Use of Different Utilities and Materials

Abstract

The increasing demands for heating and air conditioning of households are the main energy users, making them the greatest greenhouse gas emitters. Switching to clean and renewable energy sources is a critical step to reduce environmental impacts. The Renewable Energy System for Residential Building Heating and Electricity Production (RESHeat) system is proposed to use solar energy to supply electricity, heating, and cooling to residential and public buildings. However, since this is a new system in the process of prototype demonstration. Its environmental impact has to be evaluated fairly to enable assessment of the potential emission reductions on a life-cycle basis. The current work proposes a footprint evaluation matrix for buildings which accounts for the competition between the use of various utilities (upstream impacts) and the potentially different routes for waste disposal (building and downstream impacts). The results indicate that the RESHeat system exhibits 80 % lower GHG emissions and 70 % less water consumption than the gas boiler heating system due to the use of solar energy in the operation phase. It offers a sustainable solution to address energy crises and mitigate global warming. The future work will extend to the comparative analysis among such solar energy systems for the provision of heating, cooling and electricity in buildings.