Assessing the environmental benefits of design for disassembly in buildings with a time-resolved prospective LCA approach

Abstract

PurposeThis study advances building LCA methodology by introducing time-resolved prospective LCA (trP-LCA). This approach improves upon static LCA through both the integration of projected changes in background LCI data as well as the consideration of product recovery potential following Abu-Ghaida et al. (2024). We quantify differences between static and time-resolved approaches and assess whether embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of Design for Disassembly (DfD) remain sizable across various future scenarios.MethodsThe trP-LCA method generates lifecycle inventories for each building product over its use timeline, including construction, replacement cycles, and end-of-life. We forecast inventory databases across nine scenarios, interpolating in 5-year increments for higher resolution temporal mapping. This methodology is applied to a case study of a single-family zero-energy building in the Netherlands, comparing three design variants: a business-as-usual design with conventional DfD elements, a variant with high disassembly potential, and one with minimal disassembly considerations.Results and discussionOur results indicate that for the zero-energy building case study, static LCA (excluding Module D benefits) overestimates embodied GHG emissions by up to 32% relative to trP-LCA, with discrepancies increasing over the building's lifespan. Enhanced disassembly potential consistently reduces embodied emissions by 12 - 25% across all projected future scenarios. Module D benefits for material recovery exhibit counterintuitive trends; as production processes become cleaner in sustainable scenarios, the environmental burden of the avoided virgin production diminishes, thus reducing the calculated credit. These findings underscore that static LCA fails to capture the technological improvements over time, leading to inflated emission estimates, particularly for replacements produced decades after construction.ConclusionsIncorporating product recovery potential, trP-LCA yields substantially different impact estimates than static LCA for long-lived buildings, especially in replacement and end-of-life phases. Although the absolute benefits of DfD may shrink in greener futures, the relative advantages persist across all scenarios. Our study contributes to sustainable building design by providing a dynamic framework that informs designers and policymakers about long-term environmental impacts, thereby supporting the transition to low-carbon, resource-efficient built environments.