Environmental consequences of refurbishment vs. demolition and reconstruction: a comparative life cycle assessment of an Italian case study

Abstract. In the building sector, the new standards for energy efficiency are reducing the energy consumption and the carbon emissions for building operation to nearly zero. As a result, the greenhouse gases emissions and related environmental impacts from materials production, and especially insulation, are becoming dominant. In the next future, most of building stock is expected to be refurbished and a great amount of construction materials will be consequently required. A relevant share of waste is generated from building construction and demolition and limiting the volume is a priority of the EU community. In this work the renovation of industrial buildings in a dismissed area located in Lecco, Italy, was considered as case study. Five alternative construction systems for renovating the building envelopes were assumed, and a life cycle assessment (LCA) adopted in order to measure the environmental impact of each alternative. The results where compared with a scenario which includes demolition and reconstruction of a similar building with the same net volume and thermal resistance. The results showed that timber and concrete are the most valuable materials to rebuild the structures in case of demolition, contrarily to steel which leads generally to higher environmental impacts, except land use. Refurbishment scenarios generally account for a lower global warming potential (GWP) even if demolition, waste treatment and benefit from recycling/reuse are taken into account.