Life cycle assessment of refurbishment strategies for historic buildings

The adoption of stricter minimum efficiency standards is bound to decrease the impact of the operational phase of buildings. The energy consumption and environmental impact of the construction and of the demolition phases will therefore play a growing role. Only a life cycle perspective can properly evaluate a building's economic and environmental performance, helping support the choices of the designer. Here, we analyse different intervention strategies for the energy refurbishment of an historic building, the former silk spinning mill located in Valmadrera, not far from Lake Como in northern Italy. The LCA results of the different strategies and the different options are discussed; they are strongly influenced by the indicator chosen for the evaluation, such as global warming potential, ecological footprint, or Eco-indicator 99. The methodological issues that arise from the different types of analysis are underlined in the conclusions.