Avaliação do ciclo de vida e as certificações ambientais para edifícios no Brasil

Abstract

The buildings and the environment are always interconnected in some way, whether in positive or negative aspects. When you want to understand and quantify the negative aspects, such as environmental impacts, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a very effective approach. In order to perform a LCA study, information is sought from the extraction to the destination of the materials or processes used in each building. The LCA quantifies environmental impacts, such as energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions from the stages of a construction, enabling the responsible team to make more conscious decisions during construction. Based on this, the LCA is satisfactorily adjusted to evaluate environmental performance measures and it is possible to include it in Environmental Certification Systems. In these circumstances, this present work seeks to analyze the relationship between the LCA and the Environmental Certification Systems of buildings in Brazil. The objective was achieved by means of bibliographical review and exploratory research. The certifications chosen for analysis in this work were BREEAM, LEED, GBC Brasil Casa and AQUA for emphasizing of LCA in each system. Along the paper, it was noted that the LCA is required by means of materials with Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) in all four Certifications and through LCA of the whole building in BREEAM and LEED. For a better explanation of how LCA is required, an example of a building that has earned the LCA related credits in each certification has been presented. At the end, a comparison was made between the four Certifications and a discussion about the current situation of Brazil in the attendance of these requirements.