Comparative Life CycleAssessment of Two Single Family Dwellings

Abstract: This study compared the Global Warming Potential (GWP) impact of two single-family dwellings situated in Halmstad and Norrköping. The aim of this thesis work is to investigate how building materials types, material quantities, and geographical boundaries affect the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results. This study focuses on climate declaration (A1-A5) LCA stages and was conducted in collaboration with Fiskarhedenvillan. The study uses a comparative LCA of various building components and materials. One Click LCA student license was used to calculate the CO2e emissions from the GWP impact category. The study found that the building in Halmstad generated 6,3% lower CO2e emissions compared to the building in Norrköping. The reason mainly was affected by the use of roofing materials. The building in Halmstad used reinforced bitumen while the building in Norrköping used concrete tile roofing. The study investigates that reinforced bitumen generates lower emissions in A1-A4 stages compared to concrete. The geographical boundaries affect the A4 stage. The building in Halmstad generated higher CO2e emissions compared to the building in Norrköping as it has long distances to the building materials suppliers. The research verifies that the A1-A3 stages considerably generate most of the emissions (70-80%) compared to A4 and A5. The A5 stage results remain the same per meter square of both dwellings considering the use of generic data from One Click LCA.