Why is this important?

According to the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC) the building sector is responsible for almost a quarter, or 23 per cent , of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. More than 50% of those emissions come from residential housing. The source of these emissions is the energy we use to live in our homes (heating, cooling, lighting, TVs etc).

The unknown factor in ASBEC's research is how many emissions exist within the building fabric itself (ie walls, floors, roofs etc). To date, the 'embodied energy' of the buildings has not been substantially quantified. As Australia continues to evolve its understanding of carbon emissions and improve the performance of our buildings it is likely embodied energy (or more accurately, embodied emissions) will be under the spotlight. The only way to substantially quantify embodied emissions is using the LCA methodology.

At its most basic level an LCA is a measure of building material and construction efficiency. Despite that, LCAs can differ in what they actually measure, even if they do follow the ISO 14040 Standard. See Total v Partial Life Cycle Assessment below.