Life Cycle Cost Analysis Paper

According to a “go green” blog named 2B Green World Website-LEED Consultants, “buildings represent over 50% of US wealth; $800 billion is the amount of renovation and new construction in the United States, buildings account for 1/6 of the worlds freshwater withdrawals, ¼ of its wood harvest and 2/5 of its material and energy flow” (Go Green Facts 1).These figures represent the disadvantages of a world without green building. Throughout this report the focus is on LEED certification and accreditation, and the impact LEED has on several different service firms. The report begins with background information about the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED, and LEED

The most important point of this submission was that it was uploaded to Youtube, allowing it to be seen by the world and inform the general public about these low-impact development technologies. Even I didn’t know some of the benefits and applications of green roofs and permeable pavement before I started this work term so I hope that these videos will introduce the general public more about these technologies. As cities continue to grow, green roofs, permeable pavements, solar panels and other low-impact development technologies have a lot of potentials, so I hope through videos like these they will be more well known and accepted so that our communities could become more green and sustainable in the

Green buildings could become one of the main factors to preserve our rapidly decaying environment. There is no easy way to define a green building, but a green building is essentially a structure that amplifies the positives and mitigates the negatives throughout the entire life cycle of the building (Kriss, 2014). There are many definitions for a green building, but all of them include the planning, designing, constructing, and operating of the building while taking into huge considerations of the energy use, water use, indoor air environment, materials used and the effect it has on the site the green building is being built on. The first green buildings dates back to as far as the 1970’s, when solar panels went from experiments to reality. Green buildings were not as popular as they are today due to their extremely high pricing. With technology rapidly growing, solar panels are becoming cheaper and cheaper, making the transition to creating green buildings more affordable. This is the primary reason for the increased growth of green buildings today. A modern company that is paving the way to the growth of green buildings named LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, focuses primarily on new and effective ideas for environmentally friendly buildings projects. With more than 60,000 commercial projects worldwide and 1.7 million square feet being certified every day, LEED is one of the leading groups for promoting green buildings. LEED has popularized the entire

There are several ecological and environmental benefits of green roofs which have consequentially brought in increasing interests in this technology. A green roof, as a “carpeting” of plants on the roof of buildings, offers many benefits in addition to enhancing its aesthetic value. Primarily, green roofs have the ability to delay the storm runoff peak occurrence, thus reducing the peak flow rate and mitigating flood risks. Another benefit is its thermal insulation potential that reduces the urban heat island effect. They also help with pollution abatement, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and general improvement of life quality in urban ecosystems (Xiaosheng et al. 2014).

“Cost-minimization analysis is mostly applied in the health sector and is a method used to measure and compare the costs of different medical interventions” Springer. Cost minimization analysis is the simplest type of cost analysis. The central focus is that one medical intervention is the same as another, at lower cost. That is the outcomes must be the same.

Both UH and UW offer undergraduate programs in communications for a comparable tuition and similar levels of national prestige (although UW is rated slightly higher) in cities where a single industry is the main economic driving force. Houston's low cost of living is desirable students may become complacent find careers that do not require a degree while in Seattle the cost of living is burdensome this, however, pressures student to complete a degree plan.

Inventory analysis is the data collection portion of a LCA and includes a quantified list of all inputs and outputs involving the entire life cycle of the concerned system. LCI involves estimating the energy and materials consumed by the system, the energy efficiency of the system’s components, and the emissions to air, land, and water by variant processes and components of the system. The process of data collection is the most time-consuming and resource-intensive step of the LCA. The reuse of data from other studies can simplify the work; however, assuring the data are representative is essential. LCI can be utilized to discover improvement opportunities and determine life cycle stages that present the most and least detrimental impacts [4].

I find little evidence of increasing psychological demands in green roofs, where the relative importance of physically demanding infrastructures is unlikely to

Use phase of building is the largest stage that impacts environment during the life cycle, so require more attention in the field of energy saving of building. In the initial design stage of buildings, through LCA can help design decisions, such as the appropriate use of zero energy building techniques. To quantitatively assess the energy consumption and environmental impact among all above stages, LCA is undoubtedly the best choice that can full evaluate the impacts during extraction of raw materials, material creation, sale, maintenance, disposal or recycling, also global warming, air pollution, water pollution and other index. Thereby more effectively improving environmental performance is to achieve green building. LCA will provide the support of data on saving water, energy, material and other indicators. Based on LCA gradually promote the use of the Environment Product Declaration (EPD), this declaration will serve as a business and marketing communication product sustainability information, greatly enhance the green building(products) influence in the consumers. In today with increasing serious energy and environmental issues, using green building instead of traditional high-energy building has become a trend. Life cycle thinking and ways can facilitate the development of the green building process, and help us to make more environmentally friendly choices for building design and material selection, especially as consumers we need to follow.

I have attached my report of my research into the implementation of green roofs in the City of Chicago. I have completed the tasks set forth in my proposal of September 23rd, 2015. Those goals were as follows: to determine both the fiscal and environmental ramifications of select green roof implementation.

It 's becoming increasingly clear that along with dark pavement and disappearing vegetation, dark/black roofing is a major contributor to the "urban heat island" effect, which is the tendency of urban areas to reach temperatures three to eight degrees higher than outlying rural areas. In addition to discomfort and even danger for people who live and work in overheated buildings, the owners of hot buildings also face escalating energy costs, potential energy shortages and accelerated aging of building structures. In response to this problem, installing a white reflective roof membrane can help reduce those energy uses and costs. This paper calculate the life cycle cost of two different roofing systems, and investigated which one is a better choice, for Mediterranean climate .We will compare a premium black roof, which requires asphalt as the adhesive and includes a white granular surface, with a premium fully adhered white membrane roof.

A green roof is a layered system, partially or completely covering the roof area and with the vegetation being planted directly in the soil media (Stewart, 2013). It is important to have a good understanding about the type of vegetated roofs and their maintenance as a facility manager. This combination of natural and man-made facility is expanding at a dynamic pace and proves to be beneficial in providing sustainability. All the basic stratigraphic composition remaining the same, green roofs can be classified as: Traditional vegetated roofs and Modular vegetated roofs (Velazquez, 2003). The difference between the two is the method of their installation and their mobility. Traditional roofs in general use either a single- ply or a multi-ply waterproofing system which is then followed by a drainage membrane and the substrate/ soil media. Whereas in a modular system the drainage, soil substrate and the plants are supported in a High density polyethylene (HDPE) trays of varying size, which are then transported to the roofs and installed. Traditional roofs can further be classified as: Extensive, Semi-intensive and Intensive (Wark and Wark, 2003). Extensive roofs are of low profile and performance, which are designed for maximum thermal and hydrological performance and minimum weight load. They contain low profiles of 6 inches or less, with smaller plant diversity and low access for active human use. When compared to extensive roofs, semi-intensive are slightly higher in profile

The enclosed recommendation report compares green roofs and white roofs, which I informed you of in my previous letter. The information in this report includes the cost analysis, which examines the installation, maintenance, and replacements costs of each roof type. In addition, the report examines the environmental impact in offsetting greenhouse gases.

Environmental effects include the materials and energy resources required to make the product, and also, the wastes and emissions produced in the process. It is often called as ‘cradle to grave’ view of seeing resource consumption (Pehnt 2006). Results of LCAs can be valuable for recognizing areas with large environmental impact, and for evaluating and improving designs. Therefore, in order to identify the environmental performances, for example, emissions and energy savings, from different type of renewable energy, a full evaluation from ‘cradle to grave’ should be done. LCA is then has been the method to measure the total impact of resource consumption. LCA is a multistep technique for calculating the lifetime environmental impact of a product or service.

To analyse whether life cycle costing can be used effectively for reducing the environmental impact of construction projects.