LIFE CYCLE ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT: ASSESSMENT OF A DETACHED HOUSE IN ALMANSA (SPAIN)

New high-energy-performance buildings developed between the end of the 90’s and the new millennium led to a significant reduction in energy consumption in the use stage (operational energy), especially for climate control. Once this goal was achieved, it appeared that, in specific building types, energy contributions produced in other stages of the life cycle of buildings (embodied energy) were comparable to energy contributions of the use stage. For this reason, a holistic approach considering all the life stages of the buildings (e.g. material production, end of life) is needed. This issue is currently a matter of debate in the scientific community. This work presents the results of an energy and environmental analysis of a recently built single-family house. This house is situated in Almansa (Spain) and it is built with the techniques and materials commonly used in the region, in particular reinforced concrete structure and external walls made of masonry. The building was analysed considering a 50-year life cycle to compute energy consumed in use stage (operational energy) and energy consumed in pre-use stage (embodied energy). The results confirm that in a 50-year life cycle operational energy and embodied energy have nearly the same weight. The work also shows that the amount of embodied energy can be reduced by about 30% by carefully selecting appropriate building materials.