Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3.2 Sources for Embodied Energy and Calculating
Annualized Embodied Energy (AEE)
Obtaining embodied energy data for a refurbishment project which can include
multiple products and processes is still a challenging task, as reliable data are not
easily available for a wide range of products, or existing data for one region are not
generally applicable to another region.
Environmental product declarations (EPD) or Type III Ecolabels, according to
ISO 14025 'Environmental labels and declarations—Type III environmental
declarations—Principles and procedures' (ISO
2006b
), are one of the most reli-
able sources of data, as they include third-party verification. The standard EN
15804 'Sustainability of construction works—EPD—Core rules for the product
category of construction products' (CEN
2012
) establishes main rules and infor-
mation necessary and relevant for carrying out an EPD. The EPDs according to EN
15804 present the results in a set of environmental indicators, which include
primary energy use, which is the indicator used in this chapter in the context of life
cycle energy performance evaluation for buildings and is what we referred to as
'embodied energy'. EPDs are published by different programme operators in
Europe, some of which are listed in Table
1
. The European Eco-Platform aims to
act as an umbrella body for all national EPD programmes, ensuring the published
EPDs follow methodology and rules and aiming for European wide recognition
between programmes.
When product-specific EPDs cannot be sourced, generic values for the products
need to be used instead. There are countries which already have national databases
for environmental data of construction products, such as Germany
(
www.okobau.dat
) or the Netherlands (
www.milieudatabase.nl
)
. These databases
present default environmental data from which embodied energy values can be
gathered in case a product-specific EPD is not available.
There are also some efforts to compile data from different literature sources,
specifically for embodied energy and embodied carbon of building products, such
as the inventory compiled by Hammond and Jones (
2008
).
As a final alternative source for information on embodied energy, there are
commercial databases like ECOINVENT (Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories
2010
), or GABI (PE International
2013
), which contain thousands of datasets with
a wide range of environmental impacts, from which embodied energy can also be
extracted.
Even with the mentioned sources, it can be noted that there is still a low
availability of environmental and embodied energy for specific construction
products that might be used in a real refurbishment project and particularly for
innovative products. However, the situation is likely to improve throughout Eur-
ope in the short term, as increasing regulations aim for reducing environmental
impacts and for disclosure of environmental information. A key regulation in this
aspect is the Construction Product Regulation (EU Parliament and Council
2011
),
