Life Cycle Assessment and Datasets Development of Steel Construction Products for the Italian LCA Database

Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) in the building sector, and in particular in the design phase, are becoming more and more widespread as these are used to identify the environmental indicators underlying the criteria of sustainability assessment protocols for buildings such as LEVEL(s), and environmental rating systems such as LEED, BREEAM, ITACA and Envision for infrastructure. In this context, the ARCADIA project (concluded in October 2023) had the main goals of creating a national Life Cycle Assessment database for selected supply chains and strengthening public administration skills in applying Life Cycle Costing in Green Public Procurement. This paper describes the LCA study phases conducted, according to the ISO 14040-44 methodology, by the working group of the steel building construction value chain and the relevant results and datasets implemented in the Italian LCA Database. The work focuses on assessing the environmental impacts of producing two main products for the steel building value chain, selected according to market needs. The methodology comprises a “cradle to gate” approach, grounded in the distinct attributes of the product systems, consequently, it can adequately aid in evaluating sustainability during decision-making for steel products by generating accurate Carbon Footprint assessments. The methodology yielded results in the range of 0.93 - 1.60 KgCO2eq/Kg, depending on case study features, and agreed with the impact value range in previous literature.