Embodied Carbon in MEP Systems: A Simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Method for MEP Systems in Standard Commercial Office Buildings in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary study to estimate material quantities and embodied carbon of building systems in commercial office buildings with the aim to advance the understanding of the role that mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems play in whole building embodied carbon. Previous studies on building embodied carbon using Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment (WBLCA) have expanded extensively over the last 10 years. However, often these studies encompass the structural scope of the building. In order to answer the research question, a simplified LCA method is proposed. The first part involves the development of a systematic framework to assess embodied carbon in MEP systems. A second stage involves the application of the assessment framework to measure the embodied carbon of MEP systems in a set of hypothetical representative office buildings in Oregon and Washington. The preliminary results show that total material quantities of MEP in typical standard commercial office buildings in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) weighs around 20 kg/m2, and the GWP is around 150 kg CO2 eq/m2 on average across four typical building size categories.