Venkat Ragavan R

Thesis/DRP/Capstone Project

A building emits Greenhouse gas (GHG) during its entire lifecycle, starting with the manufacturing of the building materials to construct the building, to the disposal of the materials at the end-of-life. The carbon emissions generated due to use of energy to operate the building are known as operational carbon, and carbon emissions occurring during the production and processing of materials and during construction, are referred to as upfront embodied carbon.
A tool to quantify the environmental impacts of building materials at each phase of the building lifecycle is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The objective of this study is to calculate the GWP emissions quantified as kilograms of CO2 equivalent released into the atmosphere (kgCO2e) from an institutional building at selected life cycle stages (A1-A5 and B6) and to discuss and strategize the passive design solutions (optimizing the envelope to reduce the operational carbon) and on-site renewable energy to achieve a Net Zero Carbon status.