Case Study of Carbon Emissions from a Building’s Life Cycle Based on BIM and Ecotect

Abstract EN

Using building information modeling (BIM) and Ecotect, this paper estimated carbon emissions during an office building’s life cycle.

This building’s life cycle CO2 emissions were divided into three parts: the construction, operation, and demolition stages.

Among these, the statistics on the schedule of quantities were generated using BIM, and the energy consumption during the building’s operational stage was obtained using ECOTECT simulation.

Sensitivity analysis was performed by changing several alternative parameters, to identify which parameter has more impacts on building performance.

The paper demonstrated that (1) BIM and Ecotect are very helpful in estimating carbon emissions from a building’s life cycle, (2) the primary and effective measures to reduce the building’s CO2 emissions in hot and humid climate should be arranged as follows: (a) within the limits of comfort, reducing the fresh air volume; (b) extending the indoor temperature range; (c) improving the thermal insulation performance of exterior windows, walls, and roofs; (d) exploiting natural ventilation during transition seasons, and (3) currently there are some limitations in performing LCA based on BIM and Ecotect.