Life-Cycle Assessment
Life-cycle assessment, or LCA, is the science of quantifying environmental impacts through the entire process of creating, transporting, using, and disposing of a product or material. Environmental impacts assessed include things like embodied carbon, smog-creation potential, and fossil fuel consumption.
For building professionals, LCA comes into play in two main ways. To understand the impacts of specific products, look to an environmental product declaration (EPD). To understand the impacts of an entire building, a whole-building LCA is required. Specialized tools are used to perform whole-building LCA.
Life-Cycle Assessment
Deep Dives
Get up to speed on complex topics. You can also earn CEUs and download PDF Spotlight Reports.
-
The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It
Feature Article
Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on. Here’s how thoughtful design can reduce global warming impact.
-
Better Steel, Lower Impacts
Feature Article
Steel’s reputation for high embodied energy and carbon emissions are well documented, but improvements in processing, product selection, and end use can minimize these impacts.
-
Engineering a Wood Revolution
Feature Article
Engineered wood products are challenging concrete and steel in structural applications while proffering a lower environmental footprint.
-
Whole-Building Life-Cycle Assessment: Taking the Measure of a Green Building
Feature Article
Why we will never understand the true impact of our buildings—and how we should try to anyway
Quick Takes
Jump straight to the essentials with these short explanations of green building concepts.
-
EPD Quick-Start Guide: 5 Easy Steps
Infographic
Use these tips to get what you need from an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), fast.
-
Retrofit or Build New? How Product Teams are Choosing
Infographic
Reasons to retrofit, reasons to tear down and build new, and how to decide.
-
How to Read an EPD: 7 Tips from the Field (Video)
Primer
In this short video primer, Arup engineer Frances Yang explains how to get what you need from environmental product declarations.
-
Life-Cycle Assessment: Tracing a Product's Impacts
Primer
Life-cycle assessment-accounting for all of the environmental impacts of a product from its manufacture to its disposal-is a simple concept, but using it to compare products in practice can be difficult.
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
-
How to Identify—and Get Your Hands on—Climate-Smart Wood
News Analysis
The Climate Smart Wood Group is offering procurement guidance while simultaneously pushing toward better data.
-
Pathfinder Tool Helps Landscape Designers Sequester More Carbon
News Brief
Even a garden or park can take decades to become carbon positive. With a little effort, it doesn’t have to be that way.
-
The Combined Effectiveness of Prefab, Wood, and Passive House
News Analysis
Recent projects have combined modular prefabrication, wood construction, and Passive House design to address sustainability goals.
-
From Norway, A New Standard for Energy-Positive Design
News Brief
Powerhouse is a new standard for energy-positive buildings that generate more energy than used for construction, operation, and demolition.
Perspective
Thought-provoking opinions from the most trusted minds in sustainability.
-
Building Products Matter Even More Than We Thought
Op-Ed
Operational energy use is critical, but materials might be an even bigger part of the solution to climate change and other pressing environmental issues.
-
Opinion: EPDs Are One Small Step for Design Professionals, a Giant Leap for Industry
Op-Ed
Uptake of life-cycle assessment will produce huge amounts of data that designers can use to reduce whole-building impacts.
-
Opinion: Orwellian EPDs Ignore the Worst Impacts of Wood, Vinyl
Op-Ed
Although life-cycle assessment has great promise, in the wrong hands it can be used for greenwashing.
-
Life-Cycle Assessment "A Powerful Tool When Used Right"
Op-Ed
A leading voice on life-cycle assessment offers a call to action for responsible use of LCA for sustainable design.
Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
-
The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It
Feature Article
Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on. Here’s how thoughtful design can reduce global warming impact.
-
The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do About It
Spotlight Report
Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on. Here’s how thoughtful design can reduce global warming impact.
