Life cycle assessment approaches applied to energy modelling of urban building stocks: a literature review

The buildings’ sector is one of the major consumers of materials and energy in the world. Thus, the construction of more efficient buildings is a fundamental undertaking to reach a more sustainable future. The evaluation of energy demand during use is no more enough, urban policymakers and urban designers are asking for more broad evaluation scenarios for their aims. The life cycle assessment (LCA) approach coupled with the energy modelling of large building stocks could answer to this request. This paper analyses the main studies available in the literature that apply LCA to large building stocks. The research approach is usually performed in steps: the characterisation of the buildings, the energy modelling and the LCA study. In literature, very few studies performed a full LCA due to the high complexity considering large building stocks.