Avaliação do ciclo de vida de um edifício no contexto da certificação ambiental LEED

Abstract

Ensuring the control of pollutant emissions caused by the construction and service life of buildings is an important step to reduce environmental impacts associated with the construction industry. In this study, a Life Cycle Assessment of an actual building was performed, aiming to achieve the requirements for the Life Cycle Impacts Reduction credit of the LEED certification. The software eToolLCD, developed for LCA of constructions, was used to perform the analysis. A baseline building was proposed, with which the LCD of the real building was compared, in order to validate the reduction of the potential impact on the analyzed impact categories. The baseline building was adapted to better represent the building market standards, to demonstrate how the materials and design choices for the real building contributed to the environmental impact in a life cycle approach in the context of the LEED certification through the LCA. The real building presented impact reduction in all seven analyzed impact categories, just with the use of waffle-slabs instead of solid concrete slabs, and by using steel with a higher recycled content percentage. Therefore, the building has potential to achieve the points of the LCA credit of the LEED certification.