Environmental performance evaluation of thermal insulation materials and its impact on the building
Introduction
The necessity to improve the buildings’ energy behaviour resulted initially from the necessity to reduce the energy consumed for their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. The energy consumption in the building sector constitutes a major part (40%) of the annual EU final energy use (European Commission, 2001). The most significant part of this amount of energy is consumed for space heating while the cooling demands, although still relative small, show a steeply increasing trend. In the last three decades an impressive progress has been made in this field, due to the application of the principles of buildings’ bioclimatic design and enhanced thermal protection. This development is examplified in the evolution of the legislative framework in Germany, which led to an increase of thermal insulation thickness from 5 cm in 1975 to the current valid minimum of 20 cm. As a result, the average specific annual consumption dropped from 300 kWh/m2 a in 1970 to 50 kWh/m2 a currently. [1]. Given the fact that a building's orientation and its architectural features are subject to restrictions imposed by the densely built urban environment and also by architectural wishes and restrictions, thermal insulation remains a vital tool towards optimisation of building's energy behaviour [2].
However, and besides energy conservation purposes, the need for an optimisation of the buildings’ energy behaviour has been enforced by the scientific and public debates focused on the quality of the urban environment. More energy efficient buildings reduce the quantities of fossil fuels consumed and thereby reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, particularly on a micro- and mesoscale. The Directive 2002/91/EC on the energy performance of buildings shifts towards the direction of improving the buildings’ overall energy efficiency. It suggests that buildings should be designed and built in such a way that the amount of primary energy required to operate them will be low and that further measures to improve the energy performance of existing buildings should taken in action. It also introduces the “energy performance certificate of a building”.
In order to minimise the building's energy consumption by means of thermal protection of its shell, insulating materials with low conductivity values, pf less than 0.04 W/mK, have been developed. The most widely used categories of insulating materials are inorganic fibrous (glass-wool and stone-wool) and organic foamy ones (expanded and extruded polystyrene and, to a smaller extend, polyurethane), whilst all other materials cover the remaining 10% of the market (mainly wood-wool). More exotic materials, like transparent insulating ones and ‘ecological’ materials based on agricultural raw materials have found limited penetration in the market, mainly because of their high cost. The most widely used insulation materials in the European market are mineral wool and polystyrene, in their main forms of stone-wool and mineral-wool and extruded and expanded polystyrenes, respectively [3].
Another point that became important during the last decade is the environmental and health aspect arising during the production of insulating materials and the construction and operation of the building. This becomes apparent, when considering the fact that insulation materials have side effects from the stage of their production until the end of their useful lifetime, which exceed by large the typical building's lifetime [4].
Section snippets
Environmental evaluation process
The decision process can be supported by different types of information related to a chain perspective which consists on some basic steps supported by tools and methodologies and focusing always on the decision's implementation. The decision process requires first of all issue definition, criteria setting, data and options’ generation, conclusion's evaluation and finally decision's selection and implementation. The matter of decision-making process is a multicriteria issue where a lot of tools’
Environmental indicators’ setting as a result of environmental evaluation process
EPE is a process of operational management which a lot of companies implement in order to monitor their environmental performance. So EPE is a methodology adopted by companies for supervising their operations based not only to economic and quality criteria but also to environmental criteria and it is based on the principle “what gets measured, gets managed” [6]. In our study the company which produces insulation materials implemented the indicators for observing its environmental performance,
Life cycle analysis’ implementation
The initial data for the insulation materials’ production process were obtained from FIBRAN SA, a Greek industry which produces insulating materials and has become one of the leading European polystyrene manufacturers. The LCA methodology was implemented in order to quantify specified data for indicators’ setting based on ISO 14031 standard's guidelines. The goal was to create efficient indicators for obtaining environmental performance evaluation and prepare the industry's structure for other
ISO 14031 interaction to LCA—environmental indicators
After calculating the inputs (raw materials and energy) and outputs (solid and liquid waste and air emissions) flows for the insulation materials’ production the data were quantified and transformed into environmental impacts such as eutrofication, greenhouse effect, energy use, etc. Therefore, the LCA was used as a tool in order to quantify the environmental impacts and set the necessary environmental parameters for the Environmental Performance Evaluation based on ISO 14031 guidelines. More
Impact of environmental evaluation of materials on the building's performance
There are two characteristic attributes of insulation materials concerning a building's environmental performance, the contained and the embodied energy. The contained energy is the energy used for the production of the unit mass of the material. It includes the energy for every production process from the extraction of the raw materials till the final placement of material in the building. It is expressed in kWh/kg material. The embodied energy is the energy required for the production and the
Conclusions
EPE is expected to have an increasingly important role to play as companies integrate environmental management activities into more broadly based corporate sustainability performance measurement and reporting initiatives. EPE is supported by innovative decisions management tools and methods as well as specified International Standards. As it is already appeared on this case study the EPE based on ISO 14031 guidelines is accomplished by quantified indicators.
This particulate case study applies
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