1. business and industrial
2. energy
3. renewable energy

Green Building Council Finland
Evaluating the Sustainability of
Buildings - Building Life Cycle
Assessment
ENERGY WEEK – VAASA
Energy and buildings 19.3.2015
contents
GREEN BUILDING COUNCILS
BUILDING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS & PASSPORT
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT & LIFE CYCLE FOOTPRINT
VIDEO (5 MINUTES)
WorldGBC
•  Network of national Green Building
Councils in more than one
hundred countries
•  Making it the world’s largest
international organisation
influencing the green building
marketplace.
•  Since 2002, WorldGBC has been
working closely with national
councils to promote local green
building actions and address
global issues such as climate
change.
•  By driving collaboration and
increasing the profile of the green
building market, the WorldGBC
works to ensure that green
buildings are a part of any
comprehensive strategy to deliver
carbon emission reductions.
LOCAL – REGIONAL – GLOBAL
Green Building Council Finland
• 
• 
• 
A non-profit organisation promoting sustainable development in the built environment
• 
• 
Funding mostly from member fees (70 %) and the rest from projects
Established in 2010
Our key focus is to encourage and advance the use of practices and methods that support sustainable development in the built
environment
Forms of operating:
- Events
Green Forum –seminars with different themes
- Projects
Building Performance Indicators
Nordic guide for sustainable materials
Framework for Nordic sustainable urban development
Build Upon – Best practices of sustainable renovation in EU – Horizon2020
- Green Building Professional
- Newsletters and websites
- News from us and elsewhere
- Green data bank
Members according to field 2014
Over 110 member organisations
around real estate and
construction sector:
•  Tenants and occupants
•  Owners and investors
•  Municipalities, public
administration
•  Infrastructure
•  Contractor, designers and
builders
•  System, product and
material suppliers
Public administration
4%
Associations and foundations
11%
Product manufacturers
18%
Education
3%
Import, wholesale, and retail
0%
Users / Occupants
4%
Owners
8%
Property maintenance
and services
4%
Design and consulting
34%
Property development
and contracting
7%
Construction
companies
7%
5 TASK GROUPS
Use and maintenance
Environmental certification
and rating tools
Education
Sustainable areas
Energy
contents
GREEN BUILDING COUNCILS
BUILDING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS & PASSPORT
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT & LIFE CYCLE FOOTPRINT
VIDEO (5 MINUTES)
Building Performance Indicators
ECONOMY
# Lifecycle Cost €
(EN 15643-4)
GLOBAL WARMING
# Life-cycle carbon
footprint kg CO2e
(EN 15978)
# Operating carbon
footprint kg CO2e
(GHG Protocol)
ENERGY
# Imported energy
# Imported primary
energy
# Baseload power
OCCUPANTS
# Indoor air quality
classification (S1-3)
# Share of satisfied
occupants %
Building passport
contents
GREEN BUILDING COUNCILS
BUILDING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS & PASSPORT
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT & LIFE CYCLE FOOTPRINT
VIDEO (5 MINUTES)
Life Cycle – more than its parts
Use & maintenance
• 
Main attention to the big
picture
• 
Not partly optimized
• 
Crucial decision are
made in the early stage
Construction
Planning &
procurement
Design
Areal planning
Standardized Life Cycle of a Building
SFS
EN 15978:2011 (E)
Figure 6 — Display of modular information for the different stages of the building assessment
Life-cycle carbon footprint (EN 15978)
Life-cycle carbon footprint is based on EN standards, which were created to remove technical
barriers of trade in construction sector. It offers a standardized, comparable and technology
neutral way to measure long term carbon emissions arising from design and construction
choices made today.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
kg kg
CO2CO
e / 2e
netto-m2 /
evaluating
period
Key characteristics:
Entirely based on physical properties (no weighting)
Calculated for the service life required by the constructor
Covers the full life-cycle, cradle to grave
Specific requirements for input data quality & coverage
Building energy consumption is primarily based on dynamic energy simulation, and only
secondarily on Construction Code.
The guideline makes the use of this standard more straight forward and provides users with
helpful standard solutions & rules for simplifying assessment in the earliest phases of the
project.
Operational carbon footprint (GHG
Protocol)
Operational carbon footprint is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, corporate accounting
methodology. It makes tracking property carbon performance fully aligned with corporate
carbon footprinting, and makes it ready to use for GRI reporting, for instance.
The indicator is designed to work fully in line with the Imported energy indicator and is
suitable both for property owners and users.
The mandatory reporting level covers all forms of energy, which is typically also the
information of which a property owner is aware at a high level of detail. The optional level of
reporting covers waste management, refrigerant leakage, vehicle fuels and other
maintenance activities. These are usually the domain of the tenant or the user of the property.
The result can be calculated with Imported energy adjusted to outdoor temperature, under the
name of Operating carbon footprint, temperature-adjusted.
kg CO2e
/heated
cross-m2
Piloting performance indicators
•  The aim was to test the usability and usefulness of the indicators in nine different organisations on
different buildings in 2013
•  The result shows that the indicators are useful but they need more instruction for calculations and
an internet based tool free to use for everybody and a database
•  The life cycle footprint is the most difficult to evaluate
•  The chosen life cycle is imperative for the end result while evaluating the life cycle footprint and
cost, recommended life cycle 50 years
Energy consumption of the pilot cases
•  In pilot cases T1/T1a and T8/T8a are demonstrated the difference
between district cooling and compressor cooling (local cooling COP=3)
•  Again large variation between cases
•  Case 9 was an office with private workspaces
Energy consumption of the pilot cases
Energy consumption kWh /
cross-m2
Energy consumption kWh /
working place
The efficiency of space use
cross-m2 / working place
The footprint of energy consumption of the pilot cases
•  The result shows that the main explaining factor is the emission unit
coefficients
•  The renewable energy affects heavily to the results
•  The pilots 5, T6, T7 and T9 did not use renewable energy
The footprint of energy consumption of the pilot cases
Energy footprint kg / cross-m2
Energy footprint kg / working
place
Energy emissions gr. / kWh
Life Cycle footprint of the pilot cases
•  Results from four pilot cases, with two different analysis periods (30 years / 50 years)
•  Results show that variation between cases is large and that the analysis period
explains much of the results
• 
• 
• 
• 
The footprint as one value is not very informative
The comparison between different designs has to be done with similar input data
The main problem of the results is the energy consumption of the use phase
The life cycle footprint is useful while comparing different alternatives of a project
Life Cycle footprint of the pilot cases
Life cycle footprint kg / netto-m2
Life cycle footprint kg / working
place
Life cycle footprint kg / working
place / year
Our future – regulating embodied energy?
EMBODIED ENERGY : POST 2021
RICS Methodology to Calculate Embodied Carbon 1st Edition 2014
Thank you!
Questions?
www.figbc.fi
%facebook.com/FIGBC
twitter.com/FiGBC_
bit.ly/figbc_linkedin
[email protected]
contents
GREEN BUILDING COUNCILS
BUILDING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS & PASSPORT
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT & LIFE CYCLE FOOTPRINT
VIDEO (5 MINUTES)