LCA

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in many ways is a methodology which building industry is looking towardsto give the answers on how to assess sustainability of buildings. In Hong Kong, like many othercountries, its application is limited by the availability of credible assessment tools in the market. Thispaper provides the details on the processes and findings of a comprehensive study initiated by theGovernment to derive a LCA tool for the use of the local building industry, addressing on researches thatare needed to really make LCA part of the answer to sustainability assessment.

Design of cooling and heating sources of HVAC system is one of the main parts of green buildingdesign, as well as one of key measures to improve building energy efficiency and reduce environmentalimpact. In this paper, a LCA model for building cooling and heating source system is put forward and anintegrated index is given to describe the total environmental impact including energy consumption,resources consumption and pollutant emission through building life, in order to guide the design ofbuilding energy system.

Proposed an alternative method to the LCA, the so-called Eco-Indicator, intended to tackle the total environmental impact on a number of different levels (e.g. materials, energy, waste, etc). It is based on a weighting method, and only a single score for the total environmental impact is calculated. It can be used to optimise heating and cooling systems.