Environmental assessment of buildings: bottlenecks in currect practice

Ever since the late sixties of the previous century, tools have been developed to be able to quantitatively assess the environmental impacts of products and processes. These tools are based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The original tools were developed to assess production strategies and consumer goods, but now they are being used to assess buildings. However, several problems arise because of the different characteristics of consumer goods and buildings. In the first part of this paper, the problems that arise are being presented. First, deficiencies in current knowledge on the environment and their implications for an LCA of buildings are described. Second, deficiencies in the building model are discussed. The building model describes the processes and products in the building life cycle that should be taken into account in the environmental assessment. Third, the practical bottlenecks in performing an environmental assessment of buildings are dealt with. In the second part of the paper, the direction for further research is outlined. Based on calculations which were performed to be able to quickly assess assumptions about the characteristics of the environmental impact of dwellings several possible topics for further research are presented.