Ecological and economic impact of various materials and constructions for buildings over the whole life-cycle

This work looks at the environmental and economic effects of different materials and constructions in the complete life cycle of buildings. The evaluation was carried out on a reference building with an array of construction methods. The comparison of the various standard constructions for the complete life cycle showed only minor differences in both environmental and economic aspects. This means, that the impact of the operation period is far bigger (70 to 90%) today than the construction itself. Differences in the materials are small and will only have an effect, if energy efficiency is increased to a high level. Because of these results the different construction principals were also compared without operation period and maintenance to locate the differences in materials. Here for example the massive timber construction comes forward in the categories of global warming potential and renewable primary energy.