The Evolving Carbon Balance of High-Performance Buildings
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Title
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The Evolving Carbon Balance of High-Performance Buildings
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Description
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Highly operationally-efficient buildings typically require significant embodied flows to guarantee low energy consumption. To highlight this tension, an operational energy simulation of a prototypical mid-rise apartment was equipped with all-electric heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The building was then upgraded from the comparatively under-performing ASHRAE 90.1-2004 standard to the higher-performing PHIUS 2021 certification, while the grid that supplied the building was simulated with aggressive, moderate, and business-as-usual emissions intensity scenarios. To assess life-cycle impacts, changes to the building’s structure, foundation, enclosure, and mechanical equipment were evaluated using life-cycle assessment (LCA), and refrigerant impacts were calculated separately using a range of 100-year global warming potentials (GWP) and leakage assumptions. In the end, the ranking of optimal high-performance building strategies is sensitive to different combinations of grid, refrigerant, and carbon accounting assumptions. As an example, the results suggest that, given a rapidly decarbonized grid, operationally-inefficient buildings with low-embodied-carbon materials will emit less life-cycle carbon than certain low-energy buildings with standard materials.
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Creator
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Yarnell, Adam Ross
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Subject
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Electrification
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High-Performance Buildings
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Life-Cycle Assessment
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Life-Cycle Carbon
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Passive House
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Refrigerants
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Architectural engineering
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Architecture
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Sustainability
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Contributor
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Grinham, Jonathan
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Norford, Leslie K.
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Date
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2022-06-09T04:12:54Z
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2022
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2022-06-08
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2022-05
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2022-06-09T04:12:54Z
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Type
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Thesis or Dissertation
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text
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Format
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application/pdf
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application/pdf
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application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
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application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
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application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
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application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
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Identifier
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Yarnell, Adam Ross. 2022. The Evolving Carbon Balance of High-Performance Buildings. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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29213187
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https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37372354
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Language
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en