Building renovations and life cycle assessment - A scoping literature review

Renovating existing buildings is important for achieving global climate targets, necessitating a comprehensive approach to environmental assessment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a vital instrument for comprehensively scrutinizing the environmental impacts of buildings over their lifespan. Despite established standards, the intricate nature of renovations introduces complexities in the application of LCA. Moreover, this research argues that recent policy developments in efficient resource use, circular economy, and energy efficiency have incentivized renovations over building new buildings. This study seeks to scrutinize trends and the utilization of LCA in building renovation research, subsequently offering recommendations for future research endeavors and policymaking. Employing a scoping review methodology, the study maps building renovation research utilizing LCA to evaluate environmental impacts, drawing insights from an analysis of 54 scientific articles published between 2005–2022. The findings demonstrate that when renovating an existing building, the options are limited by the prerequisites from the design decisions decades ago. Thus, setting environmental benchmarks reflected in the variability of scope and functional units used in research is challenging. Recommendations for future research emphasize addressing granularity issues in assessments, improving communication of environmental impacts, considering the assessment scale, and incorporating economic and social impacts. These insights aim to guide and enhance building renovations for a more sustainable future.