Summary

Buildings and neighborhoods: energy efficiency and environmental impact

Fonds d'établissement (Smart Living Lab)

iCoSyS

Thomas Jusselme
Skills directory

September 2024 - August 2026

Building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data exchange: a first Swiss carbon performance framework for reporting and capitalization

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is crucial for measuring and reporting environmental impacts. While there are new norms on building LCA towards defining the carbon budget for the construction sector in Switzerland (SIA 390), a main barrier to its wider application is the lack of a carbon reporting framework and a digital repository to capitalize the LCA results. A standardized assessment, reporting and data exchange could increase transparency on climate-related parameters for buildings.

Carbon metrics (e.g. kgCO2-eq) are relatively newer to building stakeholders, therefore, there is a need for common benchmarks to compare the LCA results. Hence, this project aims to develop a Swiss carbon performance framework to overcome these gaps through a common scope of definitions and harmonization of datasets with a structure for reporting and exchanging LCA data. The framework will be validated, and the project will explore collaborations between practices, public authorities and certification bodies.