The Effect of Circular Strategies on Reducing the Embodied Carbon When Renovating Residential Dwellings in Flanders

As buildings are responsible for an important share of the energy use and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Europe, renovation of the building stock is a key priority in the coming decades. As these large-scale renovations will require a vast amount of materials, sustainable solutions for material use in renovations must be searched for. To date, the use of circular materials is put forward to reduce the embodied impact of building renovations. To get a better insight into the carbon footprint of building renovation using circular materials, the life cycle carbon footprint for these renovation solutions is studied in this paper. To avoid burden shifting, multiple impact categories have been assessed. For each element of the building envelope, a life cycle assessment (LCA) has been conducted of a renovation with conventional materials and four circular renovation measures, i.e., avoiding materials, using reclaimed materials, using recycled materials, and using bio-based materials. The results provide insight into the environmental benefits and burdens of these circular renovation approaches for single family houses in Flanders. This paper is expected to contribute to the debate on using circular strategies for renovation by highlighting their benefits and burdens.