ABSTRACT
In EN standards for life cycle assessment for buildings, time-related parameters such as the Reference Study Period (RSP) of buildings and Reference Service Life (RSL) of building products are only vaguely defined. Therefore authors often chose, depending on their background, arbitrary time-related parameters for LCA calculations. According to the LCA method in EN 15978:2012, this study examines the impact of different RSP on building LCAs over 30, 50, 80 and 100 years with regard to the input of material masses and associated global warming potential relating to building construction and technical equipment. In summary the analysis show that the LCA results for a building depend on the RSP and the number of replacement of replaceable building components over the building’s use stage. Due to the various results, the importance of an adequate choice, or rather of uniform guidelines, for RSP and RSL in LCAs is obvious.
