Comparative life cycle carbon emission assessment of a residential building: a case study of Cambodia

This paper studies life cycle assessment (LCA) of a townhouse in Cambodia as a case study and compares carbon emission (CE) of green building scenarios generated with two types of LCA: screening and simplified. The research methodology is based on the building modelled in SimaPro software using ecoinvent 3 databases to assess life cycle CE of case study and different selected scenarios. The simplified LCA result show that the building produced a CE of 1276 kg CO2-eq/m2 and the average difference between the screening result and that of the simplified LCA is 2.8%, ranging from 1.9% to 4.9% according to the design scenario studied. The combination of the four tested strategies reduced the building’s CE by 42% compared to the existing house. The results show the potential for integrating LCA into green building design in Cambodia. The screening LCA can be a useful tool to pre-size the GHG emissions produced by building and test different decarbonization options during the design stage.