| 1. |
- Brismark, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Climate Mitigation in the Swedish Single-Family Homes Industry and Potentials for LCA as Decision Support
- 2022
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Ingår i: Buildings. - : MDPI. - 2075-5309. ; 12:5, s. 588-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Decision support tools for incentivizing environmentally sound decisions in building design,such as LCA (life cycle assessment), have been highlighted as an essential feature for enhancingthe realization of more sustainable buildings. Nevertheless, the use of LCA to support decisions inbuilding design is still limited in practice. A better understanding of the social dynamics and detailedcontexts of the decisions leading up to a final building design is therefore critical for better integrationof LCA-based information in the decision-making processes. This paper reports a qualitative, semistructuredinterview study of single-family home producers in Sweden and their decision-making inrelation to climate mitigation, with a particular focus on embodied carbon mitigation. By studying aspecific branch of the building and construction sector, a more in-depth record can be obtained of theparticularities of implementation contexts and decision-making situations in which LCA may, or maynot, have a role in driving climate mitigation. Four primary decision contexts in which LCA mayhave an influential role to drive embodied carbon reduction include: (1) the development of buildingsystems, (2) development and offering of house models, (3) the selection of construction products forthe building system as well as for the offer of add-on products to customers, and (4) the dialoguesin the individual house-buyer projects. Decision-making that affects sustainable outcomes in thispart of the sector is very much dependent on a supporting regulatory context. Over the years, usingbuilding LCA in early design stages, for optimization towards low-impact final buildings, has been arepeatedly promoted recommendation both in academia and practice. This study, however, revealsthat such a conclusion is too simplistic. The different overarching decision contexts identified for thisparticular branch display the variety of needs for life cycle-based information.
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| 2. |
- Brown, Nils, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Value creation for tenants in environmentally certified buildings
- 2016
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Ingår i: Building Research & Information. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0961-3218 .- 1466-4321.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Previous research suggests that environmental certification (EC) affects rental rates in non-residential buildings, but there is still little understanding of how tenants differentiate such buildings from those without EC. This paper examines whether and how tenants perceive value creation in EC premises in Sweden. The findings (based on 29 questionnaire responses and 14 interviews with tenants in EC buildings) inform landlords and tenants on the development of EC strategies for improved organizational outcomes. EC creates value for tenants principally as support for their environmental management and reporting (e.g., low energy demand). EC is important for tenants internally, raising employee environmental awareness and improving employee attraction and retention. Tenants are generally positive about employee morale, indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and rental costs. However, it is not clear if such perceptions are dependent on features of modern premises in general, such as new fixtures, fittings and furnishings, and space-efficiency or from some EC-related feature. Tenants do not identify health or productivity increase in their EC premises. Findings suggest that the research focus should be shifted from investigating health and productivity increases through IEQ improvement to understanding the motivational improvement through value alignment with employees through EC.
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| 3. |
- Brown, Nils W. O., 1977-
(författare)
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Managing high environmental performance? : Applying life cycle approaches and environmental certification tools in the building and real estate sectors
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this thesis is to demonstrate and critically assess life cycle approaches’ and environmental certification (EC) tools’ potential for supporting decisions for improved environmental performance in the building and real estate sectors.Using life cycle approaches, the thesis shows that for new build and renovation cases aiming for low operational energy use that embodied global warming potential (GWP) due to material production can constitute a large portion of a building’s lifetime GWP. Therefore life cycle based information about materials’ embodied GWP needs to be made available to and utilized by design process decision makers.It was also shown that applying the Swedish EC tool Miljöbyggnad was useful in highlighting potential positive and negative changes in indoor environmental quality arising from renovation packages aiming at significant operational energy use reduction in existing multifamily buildings. However such renovation packages are not profitable from a property owner perspective. Miljöbyggnad may be useful when designing policy instruments to overcome this. The thesis also showed that EC and related environmental enhancements contribute to achieving property owners’ and tenants’ overall strategic objectives for value creation. For property owners this arises for example through lower energy costs and attracting desirable tenants. For tenants, value creation arises as support for internal and external environmental communication.For the further development of life cycle approaches’ and EC tools’ application to buildings and real estate it is important to consider how they can be adapted to consider ‘distance to sustainable’ targets referencing for instance the planetary boundaries approach. It is also interesting to investigate how valuation of buildings and real estate may be performed in a way that expands from the current narrow focus on the economic perspective to also include environmental and social perspectives.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Francart, Nicolas, 1993-
(författare)
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Buildings in municipal climate change mitigation strategies : towards life cycle thinking
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fulfilling climate targets requires ambitious changes. The building sector is a large contributor to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), but also offers opportunities for climate change impact reductions. This thesis aims at supporting strategic decisions to reach climate change mitigation targets in the building sector, based on knowledge about what factors contribute significantly to climate impact from buildings in a life cycle perspective and how practitioners can influence these factors. More specifically, a first point of investigation concerns what aspects play a key importance in buildings’ climate impact, and what climate change mitigation strategies for the building sector should focus on. A quantitative analysis of backcasting scenarios for 2050 was performed using a spreadsheet model to estimate GHG emissions for the building sector. The parameters were adjusted to ensure that a GHG emission quota was reached in every scenario. This provided an illustration of four very different ways the building sector could contribute to the fulfillment of a global climate change mitigation target. The results were used to discuss what aspects of buildings were particularly important for target fulfillment. These aspects include a low-carbon energy mix, a reduction of GHG emissions from construction materials and an optimized use of space. A second point of investigation concerns how municipalities can influence practices through the use of environmental requirements in construction, in particular requirements based on a life cycle approach. A survey of Swedish municipalities was used to assess their current practices and knowledge level regarding mitigating climate change impact from construction, as well as the influence of a municipality’s size on these practices. It was followed up by semi-structured interviews investigating barriers to the use of environmental requirements in construction. Barriers were identified regarding in-house skills, access to data, resources, ambiguities regarding the law and guidance from national authorities. A stepwise strategy was suggested to overcome these barriers and successfully implement environmental requirements. Therefore, the thesis as a whole provides insight on how municipalities could use environmental requirements in construction to influence current practices in the building sector, so that the changes needed to fulfill the 1.5℃ target are implemented.
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| 6. |
- Francart, Nicolas, 1993-
(författare)
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Decision support for the implementation of low-carbon measures in the building sector
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The building sector is responsible for about a fifth to a third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, a successful mitigation of GHG emissions over the entire life cycle of buildings is particularly important to achieve climate targets such as the Paris Agreement. This requires measures at multiple levels and from multiple actors, including broad roadmaps for the building sector, policies and regulations, certification and green procurement criteria, and new practices among property owners, architects, developers and manufacturers. Such initiatives are sometimes supported by the introduction of tools and methods to quantitatively assess environmental performance. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one such tool, used in certification and increasingly in procurement and regulation. To reliably steer towards lower environmental impacts, environmental performance assessment tools need to be precise, accurate and well-adapted to the decision contexts in which they will be used. While a tool like LCA can provide valuable decision support, some methodological issues remain unresolved, and its effect in real decision situations remains understudied.This thesis aims to support decisions and initiatives to mitigate environmental impacts in the building sector, with a particular focus on fulfilling ambitious climate targets. The thesis addresses two facets of this overarching issue. First, it investigates challenges to the implementation of relevant sustainable practices, at various levels and in various decision contexts. Second, the thesis considers to what extent environmental performance assessments could steer towards low environmental impacts (and in particular low global warming potential (GWP)).The thesis is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. At a strategic level, a quantitative model of buildings’ GWP linked to four backcasting future scenarios is used to spotlight issues for the fulfilment of ambitious climate targets. This helps challenging existing paradigms and images of the future about how buildings are constructed and operated. At a more operational level, multiple qualitative studies explore barriers to specific practices to mitigate environmental impacts, and the roles played by environmental performance assessments. An interview- and workshop study explores important factors for the adoption of space sharing, as a way of optimizing the use of indoor space. A survey- and interview study highlights challenges to the use of requirements by Swedish municipalities to promote low-GWP construction. A third interview study shows how various artefacts mediate work with sustainable design in housing projects. Finally, the thesis addresses more directly the accuracy of environmental performance assessments, and investigates how choices of data and method related to maintenance and replacement affect LCA results, exemplified for façade materials.The modelling of buildings’ GWP in backcasting scenarios helps challenge current paradigms by drawing attention to some less-discussed issues, such as reducing embodied emissions (including by avoiding new construction) as well as the demand for indoor space. Space sharing can help optimizing the use of indoor space, but several factors limit its adoption. It requires different practices among building users and property managers, including different business models and performance metrics considering occupancy. Ambiguities in national legislation and municipal plans regarding the status of shared and multifunctional buildings also hinder space sharing initiatives (e.g. unclear rights and responsibilities of tenants and property owners, conflicting requirements for fire safety or ventilation, etc.). Similarly, the thesis highlights important regulatory ambiguities regarding to what extent municipalities can set requirements to promote low-GWP construction. Environmental performance requirements in construction also entail barriers related to limited in-house skills, access to data, time and resources. Using such requirements would first require bridging skill and data gaps. Similar barriers are highlighted regarding the use of LCA in public housing projects. In such projects, artefacts such as national regulations, local development plans and internal requirements of the housing organization enforce a certain level of work with sustainable design while limiting the range of design options. Other artefacts simplify the design work and provide standardized default options. In such cases, design choices that strongly influence environmental performance are taken upstream of the project, when these criteria, requirements and default options are developed.The thesis highlights ways in which quantitative assessments of environmental performance could directly influence building design and management, e.g. through the introduction of environmental performance criteria in regulation and procurement. Besides challenges related to skill, data, time and resources mentioned above, the thesis draws attention to the variability of LCA results due to choices of method and data sources. In the particular case of maintenance and replacement processes, the choice of reference study period (RSP) influences the relative significance of these processes, and longer RSPs favor more durable products. Discrepancies exist between different sources for service life data, indicating a need for more reliable data. The use of a round-up or annualized number of replacements makes little difference in average, but can lead to different outcomes in specific cases. This shows a need to carefully harmonize methodological choices as LCA becomes used more and more broadly in procurement and building regulation.Furthermore, the thesis also draws attention to more complex effects of environmental performance assessments in housing projects. Widespread certification systems can become de-facto definitions of sustainability for actors, influencing design even in projects that are not certified. Environmental performance assessments can hide or reveal certain aspects of sustainability. Widely used assessment tools can act as “black boxes”, where criteria for what constitutes a sustainable building are hidden and no longer contested. This process helps operationalize sustainability in building projects. However, it can lead to some important aspects being disregarded. For instance, conventional energy performance metrics are often normalized for floor area, ignoring occupancy and space efficiency. On the other hand, quantitative assessments can also highlight important aspects of the multifaceted issue of sustainability. The thesis exemplifies this by using a quantitative model of buildings’ GWP to draw attention to key mitigation strategies, and by reviewing energy metrics highlighting occupancy and space efficiency.
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| 7. |
- Francart, Nicolas, 1993-, et al.
(författare)
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How artefacts mediate sustainability in public housing projects
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The concept of “sustainable building”, in its various interpretations, is becoming increasingly important for policymakers, planners and building sector practitioners. The ways actors work with building sustainability are influenced by requirements, guidelines, criteria for green procurement and certification, assessment tools, internal documents of their company, etc. The present study investigates how such artefacts mediate building design, focusing on how they support or define aspirations towards environmental sustainability. This investigation is based on case studies of public housing projects in Sweden and Cyprus. First of all, the cases indicate that artefacts set boundaries to the range of available sustainable design options. On one hand, regulations, certification systems and directives internal or external to the housing company codify and enforce minimum demands regarding sustainability. Several actors mentioned that a major driver of their work with sustainable design was the need to fulfil requirements set in regulations, plans, directives or procurement documents. On the other hand, cost calculations, procurement laws and requirements in development plans also restrict the range of possible design options. Artefacts also streamline and simplify the design process. The use of predefined or default options, checklists, standardised technical specifications and databases implies that some key design choices are not made within the project itself, but outside of it, when these guidelines and standards are developed. However, these various requirements, constraints and standardised options are often bent and adapted on a case-by-case basis, showing a complex and interdependent relationship between artefacts and actors’ agency. Significant differences were apparent between the Swedish and Cypriot cases. In the Swedish cases, the ways actors understand and operationalise the concept of “sustainable building” is strongly reified, codified and enforced through various interconnected artefacts. The widespread Miljöbyggnad certification is often a de facto definition of sustainability and a reference for actors to set practical sustainability criteria. Third party environmental databases for construction products also create black boxes where environmental performance criteria are unchallenged and not immediately visible to the user. This reification was less noticeable in the Cypriot cases. Cypriot designers’ work with sustainability seemed to depend to a larger extent on their motivation, experience, knowledge, skills and ability to convince their peers. The paper ends with a discussion of implications for the implementation of environmental performance criteria and decision support tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA).
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| 8. |
- Francart, Nicolas, et al.
(författare)
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Requirements set by Swedish municipalities to promote construction with low climate change impact
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786. ; 208, s. 117-131
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigates how Swedish municipalities work to reduce the climate change impact of building construction. It focuses on current practices related to promoting the use of sustainable construction materials and on barriers to environmental requirements in construction, in particular environmental performance requirements based on LCA procedures. Municipalities were surveyed about the existence of municipal policies dealing with environmental issues in construction, the knowledge level about these issues, and the measures and requirements used to promote materials with low climate change impact. The survey was followed by semi-structured interviews about current practices and barriers to environmental requirements in construction. Results show that large municipalities are more likely to have dedicated policies and implement more measures than their smaller counterparts. However, willingness to implement future measures and knowledge of sustainable construction do not vary significantly with municipality population. Efforts are often limited to procurement, municipal construction projects and discussions with stakeholders. When requirements are set, they are almost always based on prescribing a technical solution (e.g. use of timber) rather than assessing environmental performance (e.g. calculating greenhouse gases emissions with a LCA tool). Measures that municipalities can take as public authorities are restricted by the law, which remains ambiguous as to the legality of environmental performance requirements. Legal issues, limited knowledge and resources appear to be the main barriers to environmental performance requirements in construction. A strategy is proposed to over
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| 9. |
- Francart, Nicolas, 1993-, et al.
(författare)
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Sharing indoor space: stakeholders’ perspectives and energy metrics
- 2020
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Ingår i: Buildings and Cities. - : Ubiquity Press, Ltd.. - 2632-6655. ; , s. 70-85
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The sharing of indoor space can improve space and energy efficiency. The drivers and barriers to space-sharing initiatives are investigated from the perspectives of building users and building sector practitioners, based on interviews and a workshop. The role of energy performance metrics in promoting space efficiency is further analysed through a literature review. From the users’ perspective, space sharing can be understood through the interplay between tangible aspects (e.g. concrete benefits derived from sharing), organisational aspects (e.g. common decision processes and conflict resolution) and social aspects (e.g. group identity and consensus on appropriate behaviours). From the perspective of architects and property owners, shareable spaces require features such as flexibility and multifunctionality. The design of such spaces is limited by regulatory issues (e.g. building regulations poorly accommodate shared facilities) and business-related issues. One such issue is that building performance metrics normalised based on floor area do not incentivise the efficient use of space. A review of complementary metrics is provided, covering parameters such as number of users, layout, time of use, etc. Each metric serves a particular purpose; therefore, a set of complementary metrics can be used to support decisions at different phases of the building’s life cycle. Practice relevanceImproving space efficiency (e.g. by sharing indoor space) is a key strategy to meet simultaneously the future demand for facilities in cities and fulfil environmental objectives such as a reduction of climate change impact in the building sector. A clearer understanding of the specificities of space sharing is provided from the perspectives of building users and practitioners. This will assist practitioners to understand the needs of other stakeholders. Regulatory and business-related barriers to space-sharing initiatives are highlighted as a first step towards overcoming these barriers. Guidance is provided on complementary energy performance metrics appropriate for space efficiency. These metrics can be used to support various decisions during the different stages of a building’s life cycle.
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| 10. |
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