Life Cycle Carbon Emissions Analysis of a Detached House in Thailand

The high demand of fossil fuels used across various sectors leads to an increase of carbon emissions released into the atmosphere. This contributes to environmental issues such as global warming, air pollution, and climate change. Thailand's commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 highlights the critical need to assess carbon emissions in residential buildings. This is due to the significant contributions of both embodied and operational emissions from buildings to overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout their lifespans. This study aims to determine the total carbon emissions of a detached house in Thailand by using the life cycle carbon emissions analysis (LCCEA) approach. The cradle-to-grave scope was employed for determining the total carbon emissions from six stages throughout the building's life cycle, i.e., initial, transportation, construction, recurrent, operational, and demolition. A detached house was broken down into 16 main building materials to quantify initial embodied emissions and recurrent embodied emission. The emission factors from the Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) were employed to calculate initial embodied emissions and recurrent embodied emissions. The results from this study revealed that fiber-cement had the highest carbon emissions, accounting for 31.92% followed by steel (30.11%), and concrete (17.35%). The quantification of transportation emissions, construction emissions, operational emissions, and demolition emissions utilizes emission factors obtained from the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization (TGO). The results show that operational emissions account for the largest proportion at 54%, followed by initial embodied emissions (35%), recurrent embodied emissions (9%), and the remaining stages (2%). The total life cycle carbon emissions of a detached house was 53.97 kgCO₂e/m²/year. These findings can be used to develop guidelines for reducing carbon emissions in building construction sector, ultimately contributing to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and fostering a sustainable future society