DF 71 — Environmental Benchmarks for buildings: Needs, challenges and solutions. 

Tuesday, 18 June 2019, ETH Zürich, Alumni (GEP) Pavillon 

We cordially invite you to the 71st Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment.
The official language of this event is English. 

The Paris agreement requires a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. One of the priority sector is the building stock, as it is an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. COP23, IEA and increasing number of countries are extending their consideration from aspects such as building energy demand and emissions from building operation to building construction and the manufacture of construction materials. stock, as it is an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. COP23, IEA and increasing number of countries are extending their consideration from aspects such as building energy demand and emissions from building operation to building construction and the manufacture of construction materials.

This DF will allow participants to inform themselves on the state of activities and regulations on the environmental LCA of buildings and infrastructure projects in Switzerland, European and other foreign countries.

The day will focus on two aspects:
• environmental benchmarks: How are they derived? What is their level of ambition (checked against, e.g. the Paris Agreement and planetary boundaries)? How much differentiation is needed/offered (new/refurbished buildings, different types of buildings, different climate zones)?
• national assessment methods: The results and learnings of a round robin test are presented in which researchers from different countries assessed an identical building with their national assessment approaches.

This DF profits from the research activities of the IEA EBC Annex 72 “Assessing Life-Cycle Related Environmental Impacts Caused by Buildings”.

This forum is targeted to LCA practitioners and researchers as well as policy makers in the construction sector.

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Call for short presentations for DF 71 – DF 73:

DF 72 — Normalization and weighting. The forgotten theme in LCA. 

Monday, 9 September, 2019, ETH Zürich, Alumni (GEP) Pavillon 

(The official language of this event is English.)

To draw the correct conclusions from LCA results can be a challenging task due to both the complexity of systems and the variety of environmental impacts that can lead to different results. Many LCA practitioners seek help in interpreting diverging results in different impact categories. However, considering that ISO standards do not declare normalization, weighting and grouping as compulsory, comparatively little scientific research on these steps is available. 

This DF will show the present state of normalization and weighting in LCA. The statements in ISO 14040 are taken as baseline, concerning e.g. internal and external reference points and hints on interpretation. 

A discussion of different weighting methods should shed more light on the uncertainties and differences of various monetary and non-monetary approaches (e.g. transparency, completeness, applicability). And how useful is the concept of the carrying capacity resp. planetary boundaries for aggregating indicator scores in this context?

In summary, the DF aims at a critical discussion and review of the available methods for normalization, grouping and weighting and seeks to demonstrate how the relevant information can be communicated to different types of stakeholders. 

 

DF 73 — Digital transformation: LCA of digital services, multifunctional devices and cloud data centres. 

Thursday, November 21, 2019, ZHAW Wädenswil (not ETH Zürich)

(The official language of this event is English.)

Increasing digitalisation not only makes our daily life easier but also causes changes in the environmental impact of our activities. The substitution of material-based services with digital services – for example films or music – alters the environmental impact of our everyday activities and shifts visible material use to less visible digital services. 

A holistic LCA of the transformation from material to digital services requires the assessment of information and communication technology (ICT) and takes into account new business models as well as emerging technologies. Modelling of digital services and multifunctional devices are complex and the choice of assumptions has a crucial impact on the final assessment. 

A discussion of all these topics in the LCA-community allows the evaluation of different approaches for the assessment of digital transformation.

This DF will therefore cover the LCA of transformation to a digital society with its wide range of devices and technologies as well as summation effects caused by new services enabled by modern ICT.