A LITERATURE REVIEW ABOUT LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT AS A TOOL TO SUPPORT CIRCULAR ECONOMY INNOVATION IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT SECTOR

Abstract

The built environment sector contributes to climate change for different reasons. First of all, to realize a building and for its maintenance, several natural resources and materials are required. There is the necessity of great energy quantities for the realization of a building. The built environment sector is responsible of a good percentage of greenhouse gas emissions, in terms of “operational emissions” and “embodied emission”. The aim of this article is to analyse how the circular economy is able to support the buildings sustainable design and what are the evaluation tools to sustain this activity. In this scenario, an analysis of the reference literature about the Life Cycle Assessment was proposed, to understand what are the new research fields in which this tool is tested.

Keywords: circular economy, built environment sector, Life Cycle Assessment