Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing approach for building decarbonization by design choices: A case study

Abstract

Decarbonizing the urban environment has two significant challenges: Increasing electricity demand due to the electrification of space heating and increased renewables share in the electricity supply. The European Commission defines a new grid support mechanism for peak-shaving products in renewed Electricity Market Design. This aims to enable a new market tool to stabilize electric supply and demand. This study examines a grid-integrated thermal storage device's technical feasibility and economic performance to meet net zero building (nZEB) definitions. Alternative scenarios considering current national nZEB targets present energy market options and regulations are compared using the life cycle cost and the global warming potentials over the building lifetime. The results show that better building performance is possible even with a low investment increase of 6.7% compared to minimum building standards based on regulations. This enables older building cases to perform similarly with new building targets for Turkish National nZEB. Building electrification using heat pumps and thermal storage systems gives similar economic performances in the long term when a dynamic electricity tariff is available. Adapting the life cycle approach to decision-making in construction contracts can lead to a 50% decrease in building emissions while staying within the same construction budget.