LCA Analysis of Wooden Construction Systems with Different Thermal Insulation

The construction industry contributes significantly to the global environmental impacts, with a large amount of energy being consumed and various pollutants being released in the production and transportation of construction materials. Environmental evaluation methods can provide a quantified estimation of particular environmental impacts of construction materials, structures or whole buildings. This study aims at environmental evaluation of wooden panel structures with different insulation materials (expanded polystyrene, mineral wool, polyurethane rigid foam, wooden particle board and hemp fibres). Five variants of cross laminated timber (CLT) panel systems were compared using SimaPro software. IPCC method was applied to calculate the share of the material variants to climate change. In addition to the global warming potentials (GWP), basic parameters, such as the values of heat transfer coefficient U, the total thickness of the walls and the total weight of the materials were analysed. The CLT structure with the hemp-based insulation proved the best environmental performance while achieving the lowest GWP.