Environmental performance of eco-design strategies applied to the building sector

The application of eco-design principles in the building sector is considered a promising way to mitigate its substantial environmental impacts. However, quantitative evidence of this mitigation potential is lacking. The objective of this paper is thus to quantify the environmental performance of diverse eco-design strategies when applied to the building sector. A novel macro-scale model, capable of estimating the potential future demand and elementary flows of changes occurring within the urban building stock, was developed. The model was coupled with Consequential Life Cycle Assessment to quantify the potential environmental effects of introducing the ecodesign strategies in the building sector. The main results show that under the right circumstances, increasing the use of wood in high-rise buildings reduces impacts, while using hempcrete for partition walls will increase the impacts. Furthermore, while introducing Design for Adaptability or Disassembly can reduce the impact of buildings under specific circumstances, this reduction can only be obtained long after the strategies are introduced. Thereby, this assessment contributes with new quantitative evidence of the eco-design strategies’ ability to mitigate environmental impacts.