Life-Cycle Assessment
Life-cycle assessment, or LCA, is the science of quantifying environmental impacts through the entire process of creating, transporting, using, and disposing of a product or material. Environmental impacts assessed include things like embodied carbon, smog-creation potential, and fossil fuel consumption.
For building professionals, LCA comes into play in two main ways. To understand the impacts of specific products, look to an environmental product declaration (EPD). To understand the impacts of an entire building, a whole-building LCA is required. Specialized tools are used to perform whole-building LCA.
Life-Cycle Assessment
Deep Dives
Get up to speed on complex topics. You can also earn CEUs and download PDF Spotlight Reports.
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What’s an EPD? Environmental Product Declaration FAQs
Feature Short
We answer FAQs on EPDs, which allow manufacturers to disclose a product’s carbon footprint and other impacts.
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Wood, Concrete, and Steel—And Their Incomparable EPDs
Feature Short
Don’t expect the turf battles over sustainability of structural systems to be settled anytime soon by EPDs.
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The Product Transparency Movement: Peeking Behind the Corporate Veil
Feature Article
Manufacturers are offering more product information than ever, but how can we know what to trust?
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Whole-Building Life-Cycle Assessment: Taking the Measure of a Green Building
Feature Article
Why we will never understand the true impact of our buildings—and how we should try to anyway
Quick Takes
Jump straight to the essentials with these short explanations of green building concepts.
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Retrofit or Build New? How Product Teams are Choosing
Infographic
Reasons to retrofit, reasons to tear down and build new, and how to decide.
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EPD Quick-Start Guide: 5 Easy Steps
Infographic
Use these tips to get what you need from an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), fast.
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Life-Cycle Assessment: Tracing a Product's Impacts
Explainer
Life-cycle assessment—accounting for all of the environmental impacts of a product from its manufacture to its disposal—is a simple concept, but using it to compare products in practice can be difficult.
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How to Read an EPD: 7 Tips from the Field (Video)
Explainer
In this short video primer, Arup engineer Frances Yang explains how to get what you need from environmental product declarations.
In The News
We break news down to the essentials and provide expert analysis.
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Air Dryer Claims Lower Impact Than Paper Towels
News Analysis
If you thought paper towels were a better option than the hand dryer, think again.
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New Revit Plug-In to "Tally" Building Life-Cycle Impacts
News Analysis
The new tool aims to help architects with whole-building LCA calculations for LEED v4 right along with their BIM process.
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Architects Push for Clearer EPDs with 2030 Challenge
News Analysis
Input from practitioners is needed, says Architecture 2030, to develop a more readable format for life-cycle data and environmental product declarations.
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Vinyl Roofing Membrane EPD Details Cradle-to-Grave Impacts
News Analysis
More trade groups are publishing industry-wide environmental product declarations to meet LEED v4 requirements.
Perspective
Thought-provoking opinions from the most trusted minds in sustainability.
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Life-Cycle Assessment "A Powerful Tool When Used Right"
Op-Ed
A leading voice on life-cycle assessment offers a call to action for responsible use of LCA for sustainable design.
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Opinion: EPDs Are One Small Step for Design Professionals, a Giant Leap for Industry
Op-Ed
Uptake of life-cycle assessment will produce huge amounts of data that designers can use to reduce whole-building impacts.
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Opinion: Orwellian EPDs Ignore the Worst Impacts of Wood, Vinyl
Op-Ed
Although life-cycle assessment has great promise, in the wrong hands it can be used for greenwashing.
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Building Products Matter Even More Than We Thought
Op-Ed
Operational energy use is critical, but materials might be an even bigger part of the solution to climate change and other pressing environmental issues.
Learning Resources
Syllabus supplements and CEU content, with automatic reporting for AIA and GBCI.
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The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It
Feature Article
Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on. Here’s how thoughtful design can reduce global warming impact.
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The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do About It
Spotlight Report
Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on. Here’s how thoughtful design can reduce global warming impact.
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The Missing Embodied Carbon Link: Construction
Spotlight Report
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The Missing Embodied Carbon Link: Construction
Feature Article
Some researchers say construction emissions could account for as much as 30% of a project’s embodied carbon. What can be done about it?
