Environmental Impacts of Multi-Storey Buildings Using Different ...

- 10 -1 IntroductionThis report was produced for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry under the Request forProposal POR/7811.The 12-month collaborative research programme was directed by the Department of Civil andNatural Resources Engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch.Scion (Wellington) was sub-contracted to undertake a substantial part of the research work,namely the Life Cycle Assessment and Green Star rating tool analysis.Acknowledgement of major contributions to the research programme is made to theUniversity of Canterbury, Scion and Victoria University of Wellington. Importantcontributions were made by many others including engineering and energy consultants,architects, quantity surveyors and construction project managers.All the Chapters in the report are written by the University of Canterbury, except Chapter 6,Life Cycle Assessment contributed by Scion.The report is structured as follows;Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Introduction.Executive Summary.A summary of the full programme of research, analyses, results, discussionsand conclusions.Background.Background information which positions the project and details goals andobjectives and the Research Team. This section also provides generalinformation about Multi-storey Timber Buildings and a significant combinedNZ Government and industry commitment to fund future relevant research.The Buildings.A key objective of the project was to design three buildings where the mainstructural components were either concrete, steel or timber. A fourth design,TimberPlus, maximising the use of timber throughout was also produced. Allbuildings have a projected 60 year lifetime.Operational Energy.A key objective of the project was to ensure that the four buildings were ‘lowenergy’ and designed to consume very similar operational energy over thelifetimes of the buildings.Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).Analysis and reporting by Scion. This chapter employs LCA to compare theenvironmental impacts of the four building designs, investigating the embodiedenergy of the various building materials and the building’s lifetime recurring(maintenance and refurbishment) embodied energy and associated operationalenergy. Two end-of-life scenarios are presented. The Global WarmingPotential (GWP) of each design is used to show differences between thebuildings due to the different materials used. A high level comparison ispresented between LCA and the NZ Green Building Council Green Star OfficeDesign rating tool.This chapter also includes the discussions and conclusions of Scion.