Managing high environmental performance? Applying life cycle approaches and environmental certification tools in the building and real estate sectors

'What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?' i Summary The building and real estate sectors are responsible for a significant portion of global society's overall environmental impacts. This thesis considers three actions that need to be applied in the sectors to mitigate these impacts. Firstly, all new buildings need to be constructed for very low operational energy use. Secondly, existing buildings need to be renovated to significantly lower their operational energy use and thirdly, the environmental impacts due to the production of building materials need to decrease. Achieving change in these areas requires the development of knowledge and expertise amongst decision making stakeholders in the sector. At the same time, it is important from a societal perspective that the building and real estate sectors provide housing of suitable quality and suited to human needs. Developed real estate furthermore constitutes a large portion of society's capital. Therefore, in taking action to improve environmental performance in the noted areas, decision making stakeholders in the sectors need simultaneously to consider these interests and the stakeholders for whom they are important. Life cycle approaches and environmental certification tools for buildings are two approaches that have the potential to provide knowledge for decision makers about how best to improve environmental performance in the areas noted, also in the context of wider stakeholder interests mentioned. The main aim of this thesis is therefore to demonstrate and critically assess life cycle approaches' and environmental certification (EC) tools' potential for supporting decisions for improved environmental performance in the building and real estate sectors. The aim has been fulfilled through independent research presented in five papers each of which considers at least one of the key areas identified for environmental performance improvement in buildings, or the interests of major stakeholders with reference to them. Firstly a life cycle approach was used to assess the embodied global warming potential (GWP) due to material production required for renovations achieving significant operational energy use reduction. Depending on the type of primary energy supply to, and the magnitude of, the operational energy use reduction itself, and the type of renovation measure, the embodied GWP can in certain cases be quite large compared to the GWP reduction arising from reduced operational energy use. Therefore life cycle based information about renovation materials' embodied GWP needs to be made available to design process decision makers, …