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Whole-Life Carbon and Integrated LCA of Buildings and Energy Systems...
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Whole-Life Carbon and Integrated LCA of Buildings and Energy Systems for Decision Support

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 849

Editors

Dr. Jingchun Shen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Energy, Forest, and Built Environment, Dalarna University, 781 70 Borlänge, Sweden
Interests: digital transformation for energy transitions; climate resilience in built environment; EU taxonomy technical screening; ESG-oriented technical solutions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alaa Khadra

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Sustainable Energy Research Centre, Dalarna University, 791 31 Falun, Sweden
Interests: life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCC) of buildings; circular economy and reuse of construction materials; HVAC system in buildings and decision making methods
Dr. Ilham Ihoume

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Sustainable Energy Research Centre, Dalarna University, 791 31 Falun, Sweden
Interests: sustainability; solar energy systems in buildings; life cycle assessment; energy policies ‎and decision support for low-carbon buildings

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the area of whole-life carbon, integrated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is essential for understanding and mitigating the environmental impacts of both buildings and energy systems throughout their entire lifespan. This Special Issue, “Whole-Life Carbon and Integrated LCA of Buildings and Energy Systems for Decision Support”, aims to accumulate relevent knowledge and practice in this domain by addressing both embodied and operational carbon within a unified framework.

We believe that the transition toward net-zero carbon requires a holistic approach that incorporates an understanding of the latest policy contexts, bearing in mind whole-life carbon thinking and integrating low-carbon strategies for both  building design and energy systems planning. This Special Issue aims to explore innovative methods, tools, and case studies that support decision-making for sustainable design, construction, and operation.

Dr. Jingchun Shen
Dr. Alaa Khadra
Dr. Ilham Ihoume
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • whole-life carbon
  • life cycle assessment (LCA)
  • dynamic LCA
  • circular construction solution
  • LCA into photovoltatics
  • sustainability in positive energy districts

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

26 pages, 11402 KB  
Article
Analysis of Carbon Emissions for Traditional Rural Residences and Adaptability Study of Lightweight Steel Assembled Rural Residences in Different Climate Zones of China
by Xingyu Jin, Ying Wu, Sheng Yao, Yuqian Nie and Jiayi Guo
Buildings 2026, 16(8), 1533; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16081533 - 14 Apr 2026
Viewed by 455
Abstract
Traditional rural residences are distributed across diverse climate zones in China, resulting in significant variations in their carbon emissions. Meanwhile, lightweight steel assembled rural residences are increasingly becoming more widely used, but unfortunately, their adaptability in different climate zones of China has not [...] Read more.
Traditional rural residences are distributed across diverse climate zones in China, resulting in significant variations in their carbon emissions. Meanwhile, lightweight steel assembled rural residences are increasingly becoming more widely used, but unfortunately, their adaptability in different climate zones of China has not been fully recognized. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the environmental impact and economic cost of lightweight steel assembled rural residences in the life cycle. Furthermore, the climate adaptability of lightweight steel assembled rural residences was explored, and a dual-objective optimization of life-cycle carbon emissions and the cost of unit carbon emission reduction was carried out. In this study, representative traditional rural residences from five climate zones of China were chosen as the research objective. At first, carbon emissions and the potential of carbon emission reduction in the life cycle of rural residences were investigated, including the production stage, construction stage, operation stage, and demolition stage, and the cost of unit carbon emission reduction for lightweight steel assembled rural residences was analyzed. Furthermore, the rural residences with the greatest optimization potential for carbon emission reduction were selected to find the optimal design parameters based on the entropy-weighted TOPSIS decision-making method. The results indicate that the production and operation stages have the greatest potential for carbon emission reduction in rural residences in the life cycle, while the construction and demolition stages contribute only marginal reductions. Furthermore, life-cycle carbon emissions can be reduced by 3.7% to 59.44% for lightweight steel assembled rural residences, and lightweight steel assembled rural residences for Siheyuan are the most suitable candidates for priority promotion, with the cost of unit carbon emission reduction being 0.099 CNY/kgCO2e. Moreover, lightweight steel assembled rural residences for MHJ demonstrate the best performance considering the objectives of life-cycle carbon emissions and the cost of unit carbon emission reduction, while NCVD performed the worst. For NCVD, with the optimal design parameters, life-cycle carbon emissions are reduced by 115.84 kgCO2e m−2, while the cost of unit carbon emission reduction increases by only 0.158 CNY/kgCO2e. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Whole-Life Carbon and Integrated LCA of Buildings and Energy Systems for Decision Support)
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