A review of embodied life cycle assessment tools used to support the building design process

Buildings and construction have a significant effect on our natural environment and are major contributors towards global energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding and improving the environmental performance of buildings is critical to reducing these effects. While there has been some success reducing the operational effects of buildings, the significance of embodied environmental effects is rising. Built environment professionals must be better equipped to understand and integrate these considerations into iterative decision-making processes. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used technique to quantify environmental effects across the life cycle of a building, however, it is not widely used by building designers. This is partially due to time constraints, the complexity of conducting detailed LCA, and the limited amount of building information available during early building design. The aim of this review is to identify the breadth of LCA tools available that support the building design process, with a focus on embodied environmental effects. A review of literature is conducted which identifies attributes and properties of these tools including: software attributes, relevance to design phases, features for building design, life cycle coverage, and data attributes. The review finds a lack of consistency between LCA tools, with varying levels of data transparency and completeness, and challenges for incorporating these tools into prevalent design workflows.