Volume 27: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part II

A integrated environmental and cost optimization approach for low carbon buildings Mark Kyeredey Ansah, Xi Chen, Hongxing Yang

Abstract

Minimizing the lifecycle environmental impact of buildings is urgently needed to achieve carbon neutrality in the coming decades. Low carbon buildings can only be achieved by optimizing the performance of buildings throughout all lifecycle phases. Currently, conventional methods are mostly used to reduce the operational impacts of buildings whereas they may limit the likelihood of enhancing the embodied performance. To improve whole lifecycle performance, enhanced methods such as the life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) need to be coupled to allow for building performance analyses across different stages. Considering the complexities of these assessments, they are often not sufficiently integrated into whole building modelling processes. To account for both embodied and operational impacts of buildings, this study proposes a robust parametric BIM-based lifecycle optimization method to achieve building designs with least environmental and economic costs. LCA and LCC are optimized with a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and applied to a case study building. The results show that the optimal design of the case building can reduce the CED, GWP and cost by 35%, 42% and 26% respectively. This integrated approach provides a robust and effective solution to optimize the whole lifecycle performance of buildings towards carbon neutrality.

Keywords Life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, building information modelling, whole lifecycle optimization, low carbon buildings