Life Cycle Costing (Environmental and Financial) of a Building

Objective

• To calculate the environmental valuation of a design/building/project.
• To find out the environmental-financial benefits of a building design with Passive design principles vs conventional building with conventional air conditioning.

Outcome

1. This activity will train students how to assess the emissions and cost tradeoffs of increased material use and/or integration of passive design/low-carbon systems features (eg. increased embodied carbon emissions of concrete in thick-walls vs. conventional walls, increased capital cost of double-glazing versus single-glazing, increased capital cost of radiant cooling vs. conventional air conditioning etc.) to determine the overarching long-term financial and environmental cost benefits of sustainable designs relative to business-as-usual architecture with mechanical air conditioned and supported designs. 
2. Students will be able to determine the benefits of using passive and sustainable design principles in their architectural design approach and foundation. 

Requirements

Selection of two designs from the past studio project, one with Mechanical ventilation (airconditioning) and the other with the application of Passive design elements and principles, Life Cycle Assessment software, Laptop.

Prerequisites

This activity needs to be carried out with the help of Life cycle assessment or Carbon footprinting expert who can guide the students calculations and the reasoning beyond it. 

The studio design to be evaluated should have all the measurements, knowledge of sustainable design (passive design) principles and its application for the intended analogy to be derived.

Procedure

The students need to do the calculation for the same design twice with different characteristics. 

1. Design with conventional air conditioning and mechanical ventilation 
2. Design with application of sustainable and passive design principles without mechanical air conditioning systems

Step 1: Calculation for conventional mechanically conditioned design: Find out the quantity (volume/areas) of all the construction materials, quantity of mechanical design, ventilation, air conditioning proposed to be used in the building and emission factor of all the identified items. Calculate the total carbon emissions the buildings will emit for its lifecycle. Along with it calculate the cost of construction and maintenance of the building for its lifecycle.

Step 2: Calculation with sustainable and passive design principles and elements: Find out the quantity (volume/areas) of all the construction materials, quantity of appliances proposed to be used in the building and emission factor of all the identified items. Calculate the total carbon emissions the buildings will emit for its lifecycle. Along with it calculate the cost of construction and maintenance of the building for its lifecycle.

Step 3: Compare the environmental and cost evaluation of the design for both the conditions and design 

Step 4: Discuss the findings in the class

References

None