Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Influence of construction material uncertainties on residential

building LCA reliability
Endrit Hoxha a, b, *, Guillaume Habert c, Se

bastien Lasvaux a, d, Jacques Chevalier a,
Robert Le Roy e, f
a
Universit
^timents (CSTB), Division Environnement et Ing

e Paris-Est, Centre Scientifique et Technique des Ba enierie du Cycle de Vie, 24 Rue Joseph Fourier,
38400, Saint Martin D’H eres, France
b
Ecole Polytechnique F
ed

erale de Lausanne (EPFL), Building 2050 Research Group, Fribourg, Switzerland
c
Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management, Chair of Sustainable Construction, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Wolfgang
Pauli Strasse 15, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland
d
University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO), School of Engineering and Business Vaud, Laboratory of Solar Energetics and Building
Physics (LESBAT), University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Avenue des Sports 20, 1401, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
e
Universit
e Paris-Est, UMR NAVIER, Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech, 6-8 Av Blaise Pascal, Cit

e Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne, 77455, Marne-la-Vall
ee Cedex 2,
France
f
GSA Laboratory, ENSAPM, 14 Rue Bonaparte, 75006, Paris, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used to evaluate the environmental impacts of buildings, but due to
Received 21 June 2016 uncertainties, the final results can be unreliable. To increase the reliability of LCA results, this study
Received in revised form identifies the building materials that have the largest relative contribution to buildings' impacts and
29 November 2016
uncertainties. To do so, the impacts of 15 single-family houses and 15 multi-family building projects
Accepted 14 December 2016
Available online 22 December 2016
situated in France are evaluated. Only the uncertainties related to input parameters for building materials
are considered (service life, characterization factors and quantity). The results obtained in this study
show that LCA will still be able to distinguish significantly between two projects if their difference is
Keywords:
Building LCA
higher than approximately 20%. Furthermore, the impacts of the buildings' exploitation phase do not
Uncertainties show any correlations with the impacts related to the construction materials. The exploitation phase
Relative contribution dominates the non-renewable energy consumption while waste impacts are most influenced by building
materials. The contribution to global warming potential is shared between both phases. Finally, rein-
forced concrete was identified as the largest contributor to the environmental impact of both building
types. In contrast, insulation materials and non-structural wood were the largest contributors to the
uncertainties of the final results for single-family houses and multi-family buildings, respectively.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction could almost double by 2030. This would lead to a catastrophic

Human activities are responsible for serious environmental
damage, depletion of planetary resources and excess emissions of
greenhouse gases (GHG). Currently, the largest challenge is the fact
that emissions of GHG have increased in constant increments since
1970, and according to the high growth scenario of the Intergov-
ernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the present impacts
* Corresponding author. Ecole Polytechnique Fe
de

rale de Lausanne, Building
2050 Research Group/EPFL Fribourg Halle bleue, site de blueFACTORY, Passage du
Cardinal 13B, Case postale 487, CH-1700, Fribourg, Switzerland.
E-mail address: end.hoxha@hotmail.com (E. Hoxha).
climate change to which a large part of the current animal and plant
species would not be able to adapt (IPCC, 2007). The building sector
is, on the one hand, identified as the biggest contributor and
globally accounts for 33 percent of GHG emissions as well as for 40
percent of the primary energy usage. However, on the other hand,
according to the United Nations Environment Program, buildings
also have the greatest potential for significantly reducing GHG
emissions compared to other major emitting sectors (UNEP SBCI,
2009). It seems therefore fundamental to assess and quantify the
environmental impact of the building sector. For more than 20
years, scientists have used life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate
the environmental impacts of new building projects and commu-
nicate their influence on sustainable development (Chevalier and

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.068
0959-6526/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
34 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47
Le Te
no, 1996). Several studies have focused on evaluating the
impact of a building and its materials, components or systems. The
objective of such research efforts was to enable the selection of
environmentally preferred materials, components or systems by
identifying the sources of the most significant environmental im-
pacts. By analysing the environmental impacts of buildings ac-
cording to their life cycle phases, Haapio and Viitaniemi (2008)
have identified the production phase as having the largest envi-
ronmental impact for newly constructed buildings. Decomposing
the building into foundations, walls, floor and roof, they further
identified walls as having the biggest responsibility for environ-
mental impacts. Thiel et al. (2013), analysed the environmental
impact of a net-zero energy building. Breaking down the total
impacts due to different materials, they found that the largest
environmental impacts were from concrete, structural steel,
photovoltaic panels, inverters and gravel. By breaking down the
building's impacts by systems, they found that the largest impacts
were from the foundations, structure and electrical equipment. To
target specific areas for minimizing impacts in future construction,
John and Habert (2013) analysed the environmental impacts of four
buildings with different types of construction and virtually
decomposed the buildings by floor type from ground floor to roof
floor (loft). They founded that the loft presented the largest CO2-
equivalent impacts. Iribarren et al. (2015), analysed the impacts of
175 different stratigraphies of external walls, finding that only nine
were deemed eco-efficient among all of the candidates.
Other studies focused their efforts on the minimization of im-
pacts during the exploitation phase of buildings. They identified the
sources of the most significant environmental impacts or devel-
oped technical systems to minimize impacts from heating and
ventilation. A review on building energy consumption presented by
Pe
rez-Lombard et al. (2008)., highlights HVAC as the largest energy
consumer in offices, hotels, retail buildings and hospitals. Showing
that the space heating had the largest environmental impacts and
aiming to reduce them, Gustavsson et al. (2010), compared the
impacts of five heating systems. They found biomass-fired systems
had very low net CO2-equivalent emission. District heating with
cogenerated heat and electricity was established as a system that
can deliver energy services with low primary energy use. Consid-
ering 21 design parameters in a sensitivity analysis, Heiselberg et al.
(2009), identified the mechanical ventilation during daytime in
winter as the most important parameter to focus on, in order to
reduce the primary energy consumption of buildings. Lighting
control was also a key parameter that had a significant influence on
the primary energy use. Ruiz et al. (2012), considered 68 design
parameters in their sensitivity analyses. Of all the design parame-
ters considered, climate most influenced the energy consumption.
While the identification of sources and the development of new
materials for the minimization of building impacts has been the
main aim in most current studies, few studies have dealt with the
reliability of the results and the uncertainties of a building's LCA.
Among the work dealing with uncertainties, Blengini and Di Carlo
(2010) questioned the degree of reliability of the calculated im-
pacts. Using a Monte Carlo method, they propagated input un-
certainties through to the environmental impacts of the building. In
this study, only the uncertainties related to the quantity of mate-
rials used in the production and maintenance phase of the building,
the transportation distance, and the uncertainties related to the
energy consumption for heating and ventilation, DHW, cooking and
lighting were considered. Globally, for the indicators considered in
the study, they obtained a coefficient of variation of 25%. Aktas and
Bilec (2011) examined the effects of materials and building service
life on the environmental impacts. They concluded that choosing
an arbitrary service life for buildings and interior finishes in-
troduces a noteworthy amount of error into LCA results. Hoxha
et al. (2016), introduce a dynamic interpretation of LCA results to
better understand the influence of building service life in com-
parison of different architectural feasibility scenarios at early
design phase of the project. Almost all of the other published
studies proposed methods for uncertainty propagation in life cycle
assessment of buildings (Lu et al., 2013; Groen et al., 2014; Wang
and Shen, 2013; Hoxha et al., 2014). The need for uncertainty
quantification has been recently highlighted by Leung et al. (2015).
In a review of 134 journal articles about the uncertainties associ-
ated with buildings' environmental impacts, they stated that the
majority of the papers reviewed aimed to develop methods for
better modelling and prediction of uncertainties.
However, none of the previous works aimed to identify con-
struction material uncertainties (impact coefficient, density, mass
and life time) at the building scale, which would finally allow the
identification of the construction material that has the largest
relative contribution to the uncertainty of a building's overall im-
pacts. The present study focuses on this specific point to identify
the building materials that have the largest relative contribution to
the impacts of a building, and those having the largest relative
contribution to the uncertainties of the building's impacts.
2. Methodology
The methodology used to evaluate the relative contribution of
materials' environmental impacts and their uncertainties to the
impacts and uncertainties of a building follow three main steps.
First, the environmental impacts of the buildings are assessed and
decomposed into materials and components. Second, the un-
certainties of the input parameters (impact coefficient, density,
mass and life time) are propagated analytically to the environ-
mental impacts of the building. Finally, the relative contribution of
the materials to both the environmental impact of the building and
the uncertainty related to this impact are evaluated and compared.
Assessment of the environmental performance of a building is
undertaken according to the European standard EN-15978 (EN-
15978, 2011). This standard breaks down the life cycle into
different stages: the product stage (A1 - A3), construction stage (A4
& A5), use and exploitation (B1 e B7) and end of life (C1 e C4). For
the environmental impact of building materials, Environmental
Product Declarations (EPD) from the French national database INIES
(in french: Information sur les impacts environnementaux et
sanitiares) (INIES, 2009) are used. These EPDs, which are provided
by manufacturers and companies, contain information about the
impacts of building materials and components over their life cycle,
which means that the environmental impact value covers the
complete life cycle of a product (production, transport, use and end
of life). The impact categories of EPDs follow one of the NF P 01-010
standards (Norme Française NF P-01010, 2004) where some of
them are comfort of those developed from the Centre of Environ-
mental Science (CML 2011 method) of Leiden University (Guine
e
et al., 2002).
To assess the impacts of the exploitation phase, a building's
energy consumption is calculated according to the French thermal
regulation RT-2012 (Th-BCE, 2012). This takes into account the
energy required for heating, cooling, domestic hot water (DHW),
ventilation, lighting, and auxiliaries. Characterization factors from
ELODIE (in french: Evaluation a  l’e

chelle de L'Ouvrage Des Impacts
Environnementaux) software for different types of energy are then
used to convert energy consumption into environmental impact
(ELODIE, 2012).
The advantage of the method using EPDs to assess the envi-
ronmental impacts of a building is to simplify the LCA (ELODIE,
2012; SETAC, 1999; Bayer et al., 2010; EeBGuide, 2011). The envi-
ronmental impacts of a building can then be assessed as a sum of
 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47
the environmental impacts of the materials plus the impact of the
energy used during the exploitation phase of the building.
Xn Xl
If ¼ I þ E (1)
i¼1 f ;i j¼1 f ;j
where If is the mean value of environmental impact f of the
building; n is the number of building materials; If ;i is the mean
value of environmental impact f of material or component i. Ef ;j is
the mean value of environmental impact f of energy type j used
during the exploitation phase of building and l is the number of
energy types used.
As the EPD already considers all life cycle phases according to NF
P 01-010 standard (Norme Française NF P-01010, 2004) (now
replaced by NF EN 15804 þ A1:2012 and NF EN 15 804/CN (EN-
15804, 2011)), with the first part of the equation (1) we assess
the production (A1-A4), construction (A4-A5), replacement (B4)
and the end of life (C2eC4) of the building, while with the second
part the operational energy (B6).In this study, the non-renewable
energy (NRE), waste and global warming potential (GWP) are the
only impact categories to have been assessed, as these impacts,
together with the water consumption indicator, are considered to
be the most pertinent according to the legislation « Grenelle de
l’Environnement » (JORF, 2010). The reason of excluding the indi-
cator of water consumption is that it is driven by the water
consumed during the service life of the building (Schiopu and
Chevalier, 2012) while the purpose of this study is mainly focused
in the materials and components. In this study, only the environ-
mental impacts related to the materials are considered, which can
be justified by their primary importance for new buildings with low
impacts during their exploitation phase (Lasvaux et al., 2016).
Introducing the parameter of density in the equation proposed by
Hoxha et al. (2014)., (eq-13, p.56) the environmental impacts of
building materials and elements are assessed:
If;i ¼ mi  um;k  kf;i  NðiÞ
where kf ;i is the environmental impact for the impact category f
associated with the life cycle of one unit mass of the building ma-
terial i; mi is the mass of material i; um;k is the unit conversion
 2
s2f;i;ð1Þ ¼ 12 m2i  u2m;k  s2kf ;i þ u2m;k  kf ;i  s2mi þ m2i  kf ;i  s2um;k
 2
s2f;i;ð2Þ ¼ 22 m2i  u2m;k  s2kf ;i þ u2m;k  kf ;i  s2mi þ m2i  kf ;i  s2um;k
 «
2 2
s2f;i;ðrÞ ¼ r2 m2i  u2m;k  s2kf ;i þ u2m;k  kf ;i  s2mi þ m2i  kf ;i  s2um;k
coefficient of the mass m and the functional unit used for the co-
efficient of the impact k; NðiÞ is the number of the time that a
material i has to be used during the service life of the building
calculated as described in Hoxha (2015).
To calculate the uncertainty related to building materials and
propagate the uncertainties due to input parameters at the material
level up to the final results at the building level, a method based on
Taylor series expansion and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) methods
has been used. The concept of this method is mainly inspired by
Hoxha et al. (2014), and present an extension of the approach
proposed by them. Since the analytical method proposed by Hoxha
et al. (2014), considered a continuous calculation of the replace-
ment rate of building materials and elements, in this study we have
introduced the ANOVA methods for the cases of discrete
35
calculation. In analytical method, the uncertainties can be
expressed in a number of ways, but in general they are expressed as
function of mean value and the variance (Morgan et al., 1990). In
this study the concept of the calculation of the mean value and
variance of the environmental impacts of building materials is
schematized in Fig. 1. The parameters of mean and variance for sub-
values (distributions in black) are calculated with the help of Taylor
series expansion method and the overall mean and variance (dis-
tribution in blue) with the help of the concept of ANOVA method.
This due to the reason that the ANOVA method can be used in
discrete variables and the Taylor series expansion only in contin-
uous variables (Mokhari and Frey, 2005).
Since the equation (2) is not continuous due to the parameter of
the number of use of material that is an integer, it is not possible the
calculation of the uncertainties using the Taylor series expansion
method. For this reason, we have decomposed it in continuous sub-
equations according on concept of ANOVA method of the decom-
position of a series of values:
If;i; 1 ¼ 1  mi  um;k  kf;i for NðiÞ ¼ 1 with a probbility pi;1
If;i;2 ¼ 2  mi  um;k  kf ;i for NðiÞ ¼ 1 with a probbility pi;2
«
If ; i; ðrÞ ¼ r  mi  um;k  kf;i for NðiÞ ¼ r with a probbility pi;r
(3)
If; i; ðrÞ is value of the environmental impact of material i when it is
used for time r during the service life of the building; pi;r present
the probability that material i will be used for time r during the
service life period of the building.
The correspond mean values of If ;i;NðiÞ¼r for NðiÞ ¼ r are assessed
with the respective mean values of for mi, um;k and kf ;i , and the
overall mean value of the environmental impact of materials with
the following equation:
X
(2) If ;i ¼ If; i; ðrÞ  pi;r (4)
r
Using Taylor series expansion as proposed by Hoxha et al.
(2014), (eq-21, p. 57) the variance for different number of use of
material and elements are calculated:
2

2

(5)

s2f;i;ðrÞ is the variance of the environmental impact of material i
when it is used for time r during the service life of the building.
In analogy with the general equation of the decomposition of
the variance according ANOVA method as described in Scherre
(2008), (eq-14.45, p.534) divided by the total number of variables,
for our case of the equation (5) the overall variance of the envi-
ronmental impacts of building materials can be calculated as
follow:
  X X  2
var If ;i ¼ s2If ;i ¼ s2f;i;ðrÞ pi;r þ pj If ;i;ðrÞ  If;i (6)
j j
The values of means and variances of the material service life
36 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47
Fig. 1. Decomposition of the variance according ANOVA concept.
have been calculated through the use of different references. For
the impact coefficients the EPDs of INIES database (INIES, 2009) are
used for the calculation of means and variances and for the den-
sities are used the information provided in EPDs and in (Couasnet,
2005). For the uncertainties of the mass parameters, discussion
with experts has enabled variations to be defined between 5%
and þ10% of material quantity for all building materials. A such
range of uncertainties for the mass are recommended also by
Blengini and Di Carlo (2010). Fully detailed information about the
data used for cradle-to-grave impact coefficients, densities, quan-
tities and service life used to assess the average values of the
environmental impacts of materials and their variances can be
found in (Hoxha, 2015).
Calculation of the variance of the environmental impacts of
materials and components allow the calculation of the variance of
the building's impacts with the following equation:
  Xn  
var If ¼ var If ;i
i¼1
where varðIf Þ is the variance of environmental impact f of the
building and varðIf ;i Þ is the variance of environmental impact f for
materials or components i.
Fully details about the method and its application to example
can be found to Hoxha (2015). Finally, based in the equation pro-
posed by Hoxha et al. (2014), (eq-3, p. 55 and eq-7, p.56) the relative
contribution of the environmental impacts of materials to the im-
pacts of the building are evaluated using the following equation:
  I
f ;i
S If ;i ¼
If
And the relative contributions of the uncertainties of materials'
environmental impacts to the uncertainties of the building's im-
pacts are evaluated using the following equation:
 
  var If ;i
 
RC If ;i ¼
var If
Example: In a building project (MFB-1 below) the quantity of
polyurethane employed is m2i ¼ 5740 kg. According to the uncer-
tainty's hypothesis of mass (Hoxha et al., 2014), the variance
calculated is equal to s2mi ¼ 32304. Based in the data provided by
INIES database (INIES, 2009) the mean value of impact coefficient
for the Global Warming Potential indicator is equal to
kf ;i ¼ 4:6 kg CO2  eq=kg material and the variance s2k ¼ 0:368. In
f ;i
this case the mean value of conversion coefficient is um;k ¼ 1 since
the mass and impact coefficient doesn't need to be converted and
the variance coming from the uncertainties of the density
varðum;k Þ ¼ 0:005. For a building reference study period of 50 years
and according the data found in literature the replacement rate of
polyurethane can vary from one to four. Due to the uncertainty and
variability the probability to be used one, two, three or four time
that is respectively 0.6%, 16.3%, 48.7% and 34.4%. Since the inputs
parameters are uncertain the polyurethane has the probability to
be used more or less than two time. With the equation (3) we can
calculate then the mean values of impact of polyurethane
(7) supposing that he will be used one, two three or four time
If;i; 1 ¼ 26461 kg CO2  eq, If;i; 2 ¼ 52923 kg CO2  eq,
If;i; 3 ¼ 79384 kg CO2  eq and If;i; 4 ¼ 105845 kg CO2  eq. The
corresponding values of variance have then the values
s2f;i;ð1Þ ¼ 16274125, s2f;i;ð2Þ ¼ 65176502, s2f;i;ð3Þ ¼ 146647130 and
s2f;i;ð4Þ ¼ 260706008. Replacing the corresponding values of
parameter to the equations (4) and (5) we can calculate the mean
value of the environmental impact of polyurethane
If;i ¼ 48450kg CO2  eq and the variance varðIf ;i Þ ¼ 410551887. In
the same way is proceed for the other materials employed in the
building. In the end the overall impact of the building is
If ¼ 795586 and the varðIf Þ ¼ 7889943316. In the end, the coeffi-
(8) cient of equations (8) and (9) calculate a SðIf ;i Þ ¼ 6% and
RCðIf ;i Þ ¼ 5:2%.
Depending on their relative contribution, the materials can be
considered to have an insignificant or a significant contribution
relative to the total building impacts as well as to the building
uncertainties. Materials having a significant relative contribution
can be divided into two groups: those contributing more to the
average impact of the building than to the uncertainties and those
(9)
contributing more to the uncertainties than to the average impacts
(Fig. 2).
 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47 37

Fig. 2. Comparison of a building material or component with large impact but small uncertainty to another with small impact but large uncertainty.

3. Description of case studies
The methodology described in the previous paragraphs has
been applied to 15 single-family houses (SFH) and 15 multi-family
building (MFB) projects. The functional unit studied in this paper is
1 m2 of net floor area (NFA) over the 50 years reference study
period of the building. The functional unit in net floor area is
supported by the Article R. 112-2 of the Town Planning Code of
France (Th-BCE, 2012), and the 50 years is proposed by Eurocode as
the design life for building (Hechler et al., 2012). This value is also
used in (Passer et al., 2012; Grant et al., 2014) for the reference
study period in their building LCA. The buildings, encompassing
more than 65667 m2 net floor area (NFA), are situated in France and
are distributed (Fig. 3) such that they cover all of the climatic zones
defined in RT-2012 (Th-BCE, 2012).
Project specification list provided by the construction com-
panies have been used for assessing the environmental impacts of
projects. Using the information about the weight of elements and
materials Fig. 4 shows roughly the types of materials used in the
different buildings. Greater variability of materials is observed in
the single-family houses than in the multi-family buildings, where
the main material is concrete. The structure of the multi-family
buildings is made of reinforced concrete, but the projects differ in
the types of external and internal walls, windows, doors and

Fig. 3. Location of projects on the map of France and shares of buildings in different climatic zones (H1a, H1b, H1c H2a, H2b, H2C, H2d and H3).
38 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47
Fig. 4. Mass distribution of the components used in building projects. Category “Rest” include: PVC, paint, polyethylene, bitumen, porcelain, acrylic, enamelled stone, aluminium,
copper, windows, solar hot water panels.
Table 1
Minimal, average (in bold) and maximal values of environmental impacts for multi-family buildings and single-family houses.
Non-renewable energy [kWh/m2
Multi-family Buildings 3715e7000 e 14060
Single-family houses 2410e5800 e 10570
technical equipment. The representativeness of the studied pro-
jects is in accordance with current construction trends in France
(CERTU, 2012; Caste
ran and Ricroch, 2006).
4. Results
4.1. Variability of impacts between projects
Environmental impacts of all projects are assessed using non-
renewable energy (NRE), waste and global warming potential
(GWP) indicators. Table 1 summarizes the minimal, average and
maximal values obtained for the three indicators. According to the
average values, single-family houses have lower impacts in NRE
and GWP per m2 than the multi-family buildings. In contrast, waste
shows the opposite result. However, considering the range of the
results and not only the average, this difference cannot be consid-
ered significant.
Fig. 5 shows the environmental impact of all of all lifecycle
phases of the studied buildings for 50-year reference study period,
and makes a distinction between embodied impacts and those
coming from the operating phase of the buildings. The energy
required in the operating phase for heating, cooling, domestic hot
water (DHW), ventilation, lighting, and auxiliaries are simulated
with the help of different software, which are all conform French
RT-2012 (Th-BCE, 2012). Finally, on the right side of the figure, the
average and the variability for both multi-family buildings and
single-family houses is shown. From this figure, it seems clear that,
with respect to NRE, most of the impacts as well as the variability
come from the exploitation phase. On average, the 15 multi-family
buildings studied have a higher NRE consumption, but the vari-
ability between studied buildings is similar to single-family houses
NFA] Waste [kg/m2 NFA] Global warming potential [kg CO2-eq/m2 NFA]
790 - 1080 - 1450 575 - 1035 - 1910
605 - 1360 - 2470 415 - 615 - 1085
and multi-family buildings. Waste generation, is clearly linked with
the dismantling of building materials at the end of life, and the
average value as well as the variability is higher in the studied
sample of single-family houses. Finally, regarding the GWP, it is
interesting to note that the impact seems to come from both the
embodied carbon as well as the exploitation phase. This difference
from the NRE can be explained by the high share of CO2-equivalent
in materials, e.g., by the chemical release of CO2-equivalent during
cement production. It is also due to the sample characteristics in
terms of heating systems implemented in new buildings. Single-
family buildings use primarily electric heating or electric heat
pumps, while only a small share of multi-family buildings use those
methods, and the remainder of the heating systems use gas boilers
(clearly visible in some projects that have higher GWP exploitation
impacts). This creates a higher variability of GWP exploitation im-
pacts in multi-family buildings. The embodied CO2-equivalent is
similar for single-family houses and multi-family buildings, while
there is a large difference in the exploitation phase in our sample, as
explained previously. As a conclusion, looking at the variability of
the studied sample, it seems that no difference can be observed
between single-family houses and multi-family buildings in con-
struction, maintenance and end of life per m2 built. A very large
variability in the impact of the exploitation phase makes the
comparison quite difficult. However, in our sample, the average
GWP as well as the variability in the exploitation phase are lower
for the single-family houses. The variability is more closely linked
to the choice of energy source than to the energy performance in
term of energy consumption. First, it can be observed that this
difference does not exist for the non-renewable energy indicator
(Fig. 5). Secondly, all of the studied buildings have good energy
performance, as they all comply with the new French energy
 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47 39

Fig. 5. Contribution of embodied impacts and impacts of the exploitation phase for NRE, Waste and GWP indicators. The results for 15 multi-family buildings and 15 single-family
houses.
40 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47

Fig. 6. Variation of the impacts of materials and exploitation phase for the NRE and GWP indicators.

standard (Th-BCE, 2012). Finally, in new collective housing, the
energy source can still be gas or fuel burners, while single-family
houses are now very often heated with electricity, which in
France has a low CO2-equivalent emission factor.
In Fig. 6, we have ranked the case studies according to their
impacts during the exploitation phase. From this figure, it seems
clear that the largest difference between buildings comes from the
energy impacts of the operational energy consumption during the
exploitation phase. In fact, we note a large absolute reduction of the
environmental impacts of the exploitation phase, while no clear
relation can be observed for the embodied impacts. This leads us to
the next key question of the study. As no correlation can be
observed between the impacts of exploitation phase and embodied
impacts, it is possible to develop buildings with very low impacts in
 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47
the exploitation phase with a similar amount of embodied impacts.
This aspect is not often so clearly mentioned, as studies often as-
sume that lower impacts in the exploitation phase are necessarily
linked with higher embodied energy (Grant et al., 2014; Berggren
et al., 2013a). However, a careful look at, for instance, Ko € nig and
De Cristofaro (2013) show similar trends. As a consequence, we
can look at the embodied impact of our building sample and
identify the key parameters to reduce the environmental impacts
without necessarily linking them with impacts of the exploitation
phase. However, as mentioned earlier, the identification of the key
building elements responsible for the embodied impacts of a
building over its life cycle cannot be assessed without considering
the uncertainty related to the service life of each building element.
4.2. Uncertainty of impacts for each project
In Fig. 7, we present the embodied environmental impacts of all
of the studied buildings, considering the uncertainties of the input
parameters (service life, cradle-to-grave characterization factor,
density and mass). The mean value of environmental impacts and
the corresponding variance of each project presented in the Fig. 7
are calculated with the help of equations (1) and (7). From these
results, we noticed that for the NRE indicators, the impacts of the
“best” case (MFB-3) do not overlap with those of the “worst” case
(SFH-10). For the waste indicators, these correspond to the impacts
of SFH-14, which do not overlap with those of SFH-10, and for the
GWP indicators, SFH-12 is significantly better than MFB-6. How-
ever, for all of the other cases, the results shown in Fig. 7 highlight
that almost all of the projects have overlapping embodied impacts
when we consider the uncertainties related to the building
materials.
4.3. Variability versus uncertainty and reliability of LCA for
buildings
For a better understanding of the consequences of the presence
of uncertainties in the environmental impacts of the materials and
components, Table 2 shows the coefficient of variation (the ratio of
the standard deviation to the average value) between the projects
and the minimum and maximum coefficient of variation in impacts'
uncertainties for all of the projects. As a first approximation, it
seems that these two types of coefficient of variation are quite
similar. This suggests that the uncertainty related to the LCA
calculation is similar to the variability of the impacts of building
projects. However, a deeper look at Table 2 shows that for the waste
and GWP impacts the LCA uncertainty is lower than what can be
achieved through alternative projects. For the NRE, it is possible to
find projects where the coefficient of variation related to LCA un-
certainty is lower than the one related to the projects. It seems
therefore possible to conclude that LCA will still be able to distin-
guish significantly between two projects if their difference is higher
than approximately 20%. For GWP the coefficient of variation is
smaller and differences could be significant above 15%. However, in
analysing current construction practice, there are few buildings
that have an embodied energy 20% lower than the average.
This leads to two major conclusions. The first, which is out of the
scope of the present study, is that there is an urgent need to
implement real ground-breaking construction technologies that
allow a reduction of more than 20% in the embodied impacts of
buildings. The barriers to implementation of environmentally
friendly materials are a key topic of many recent papers (Giesekam
et al., 2015; Arora et al., 2014). The second conclusion is that the
minimization of uncertainties in LCA calculation is relevant if we
want to have reliable comparisons between current projects. To
increase the reliability of the results, it is then important to identify
41
the relative contribution of each material to the uncertainties in the
buildings' impacts.
4.4. Sensitivity analysis of the building elements of all building
projects
Merging the building materials according to their functions,
Fig. 8 shows the relative contribution of each group of materials in
the studied buildings to the overall impacts of the buildings and the
uncertainty of each building's impact. Furthermore, the average
among the studied buildings for each group of materials is also
plotted. As a function of the relative contribution of the materials,
different classifications of the groups of materials can be identified.
Cut-off levels of 5 and 10% are used for the classification of mate-
rials according to their influence on the impacts and uncertainties.
Regarding single-family house projects, the materials employed in
the structure (concrete and steel, brick, blocks and wood) and non-
structural elements make significant relative contributions (with a
cut-off of 10%) to the results of the NRE indicator. Insulation,
openings and finishing make significant relative contributions to
the uncertainties. For the waste indicator, only structural materials
(concrete and steel) make a significant relative contribution to the
impacts. The non-structural elements, finishing and other struc-
tural elements make significant relative contributions to the un-
certainties. Structural elements (concrete and steel) and non-
structural elements are classified as having significant relative
contributions to the impacts for the GWP indicator, and insulation,
finishing and other structural elements make significant relative
contributions to the uncertainties.
For multi-family buildings, the structural elements (concrete
and steel) make a significant relative contribution to the impacts on
all three of the indicators. For the NRE indicator, insulation, fin-
ishing, openings and the rest make significant relative contribu-
tions to the uncertainties. For the waste indicator, non-structural
elements and finishing make significant relative contributions to
the uncertainties and for the GWP indicator, finishing and openings
do. Based on these results, the structural materials make a signifi-
cant relative contribution to impacts and non-structural materials,
insulation, openings and finishing to uncertainties.
For a more detailed breakdown of building materials, Fig. 9
presents the relative contribution of each material to the overall
impact of the building and the uncertainty of the building's impact.
In single-family house projects, reinforced concrete is the ma-
terial that makes a significant relative contribution (with a cut-off
of 10%) to the results of the NRE indicator, and polystyrene, glass
wool, and non-structural wood make significant relative contri-
butions to the uncertainties.
Reinforced concrete, structural fired clay, and non-structural
concrete are identified as the materials making significant rela-
tive contributions to the results of the waste indicator, and gravel
and structural concrete are the materials making significant rela-
tive contributions to the uncertainties. For the GWP indicator,
reinforced concrete is identified as making a significant relative
contribution to the impacts, and polystyrene to the uncertainties.
Regarding the multi-family buildings, reinforced concrete and
PVC are the materials that make significant relative contributions to
the results of the NRE indicator, and polystyrene, non-structural
wood, and bitumen make significant relative contributions to the
uncertainties. Reinforced concrete makes a significant relative
contribution to the results of the waste indicator, and gravel and
non-structural concrete make significant relative contributions to
the uncertainties. For the GWP indicator, reinforced concrete makes
a significant relative contribution to the impacts, and windows and
non-structural wood make significant relative contributions to the
uncertainties. According to this analysis, all of the other materials
42 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47

Fig. 7. Uncertainties of environmental impacts of 15 multi-family buildings and 15 single-family houses. Error bars represent 95% of the impact variation.
 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47
Table 2
Variation of impacts and impacts' uncertainties in 15 single-family houses and 15
multi-family buildings. Cv,ave: Coefficient of variation of projects' impacts. Cv,unc:
coefficient of variation of impacts' uncertainties.
NRE Waste GWP
Cv,ave Cv,unc Cv,ave Cv,unc Cv,ave Cv,unc
Single-family houses 21.4% 8-23% 33.6% 11-19% 21.2% 9-14%
Multi-family buildings 17.4% 11-17% 30.4% 9-27% 18.2% 10-13%
employed in both single-family houses and multi-family buildings
can be considered to make insignificant relative contributions to all
of the indicators and their uncertainties.
4.5. Identification of key parameters in building LCA
Based on these results, it is remarkable that reinforced concrete
is always classified as a material that makes a significant relative
contribution to the results of the indicators, and insulation as a
material that makes a significant relative contribution to the un-
certainties. For a general classification of materials according to
their relative contribution on all indicators, we have summed all
the results with an equal weighting for the three indicators. Since in
the legislation « Grenelle de l’Environnement » (JORF, 2010), these
indicators are highlighted as most important for the French context
but doesn't have been proposed weighting factors, we have
considered them with equal importance and consequently with
equal weights without prioritizing anyone. The final results ob-
tained are presented in Fig. 10. Reinforced concrete is classified as
the only material making a very significant relative contribution to
the final impact for both single-family houses and multi-family
buildings. Polystyrene is the material making a very significant
relative contribution to uncertainties in single-family houses and
non-structural wood for multi-family buildings. Then, if 10% is
considered to be the cut-off value, all other materials are classified
as having an insignificant relative contribution.
5. Discussion
The results for the environmental impacts presented in this
paper depend, of course, on the building projects, but they repre-
sent a representative sample of new single-family houses and
multi-family buildings in France. In this study, we found that the
energy used in the exploitation phase contributes between 30 and
90% of the impacts in the NRE indicator. Other authors (Ronning
et al., 2001; Sartori and Hestnes, 2007; Dimoudi and Tompa,
2008; Ortiz et al., 2009; Ramesh et al., 2010; Berggren et al.,
2013b) have found the same results. We can conclude that the ra-
tio of impacts has changed when we compare the results obtained
in 2001 with those of this study. For the results obtained in 2001,
the energy used in the exploitation phase was responsible for 90%
of the NRE impacts, while here we found some cases in which the
energy used in the exploitation phase contributes only 30% of the
NRE impact. For the GWP indicator, Passer et al. (2012), found the
materials to be responsible for 30% of building impacts. From a
population of 12 buildings situated in Switzerland, John (2012) has
identified materials as responsible for approximately 70% of results
for the GWP indicator. In the cases presented in this study, we
found that materials can be responsible for 20e90% of the GWP
indicator. These variations of percentage in contribution of mate-
rials in the GWP indicator in this study and in the study presented
by John (2012) and Passer et al. (2012)., is mainly due to the ener-
getic efficiency of the building projects and the materials employed.
The energetic efficiency of a building is in disproportion with the
43
impact of the exploitation phase. Higher is the efficiency of a
building and lower are the impacts of the exploitation phase.
The other fundamental result that seems to emerge from the
present study is that the impacts of the exploitation phase are not
related to any difference in embodied energy. It is possible to build
a building with the right amount of material and very low impacts
in the exploitation phase, while the opposite is also possible.
This can be explained by the fact that in this study, as well as in
previous studies (Thiel et al., 2013), reinforced concrete has been
identified as the material that makes the most significant contri-
bution to the impacts of buildings. This is also true for single-family
houses, which are not always built with reinforced concrete as a
structural material. Reinforced concrete is also used in foundations,
which can make a major contribution to the impact of single-family
houses at the end of their life, as shown recently for reconstruction
shelters (Zea et al., 2016). More generally, the results of this study
show the gap between real construction practices and the best
practices proposed in the literature for the reduction of building
impacts. A clear challenge appears for the strategies for imple-
mentation of these innovative practices.
Concerning non-structural materials, the wood used in non-
structural elements together with polystyrene, windows,
bitumen, glass wool, structural concrete and gravel are identified in
this study as making significant relative contributions to the un-
certainties of buildings' impacts. In such non-structural elements,
the source of uncertainties between the parameters of mass, den-
sity, cradle-to-grave characterization factors and service life are
often more closely linked to the last parameter (Hoxha, 2015). This
is due to the limited knowledge of the effective service life of the
different non-structural materials in a single-family house. As a
consequence, the database we used includes very large differences
in the potential service life of materials. On the one hand, it can be
considered to be a valid hypothesis, as in reality there is probably a
very wide range of practice, and because the end of life of non-
structural components is related to building user behaviour and
linked with trends and market incentives. However, on the other
hand, the database of average service life and coefficient of varia-
tion for each material could probably be improved with a better
survey of building user practices.
6. Conclusion
In this study, we have presented the environmental impacts of
15 single-family houses and 15 multi-family buildings using the
indicators of non-renewable energy, waste and global warming
potential. It has been shown that LCA will still be able to distinguish
significantly between two projects if their difference is higher than
approximately 20%. The impacts of building materials were iden-
tified as the largest contributors to the waste indicator and
contributed equally to the exploitation phase to the global warming
potential indicator. No relationship could be found between the
impacts of the exploitation phase of building and the embodied
impacts. This means that it is possible to develop projects with very
low impacts in the exploitation phase with no additional embodied
impacts.
However, when considering uncertainties in the impacts of
building materials, the uncertainty of LCA calculation is only
slightly smaller than the variability between current building pro-
jects. Except for projects that have a difference of more than 20%, it
is not possible to distinguish two projects.
In the present study, we identified the insulation materials as
being the key building materials controlling this uncertainty, but
non-structural wood is also important for multi-family buildings.
Finally, we confirmed that reinforced concrete makes the main
contribution to the environmental impact for all building
44 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47

Fig. 8. Relative contribution of groups of materials to building impacts and their uncertainties for the NRE, waste and GWP indicators.

typologies, which explains also why no correlation is found be- related to their calculations, and for structural designers, to give
tween exploitation and embodied impacts. benchmarks for assessing to what degree newly developed projects
These results are important for LCA-practitioners, by showing are ground-breaking.
where they must focus their effort to minimize the uncertainties
 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47 45

Fig. 9. Relative contribution of groups of materials to building impacts and their uncertainties for the NRE, waste and GWP indicators.
46 E. Hoxha et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 144 (2017) 33e47

Fig. 10. Identification of building materials with the most influence on the impacts and uncertainties for single-family houses and residential buildings.

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