processes Review Application of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment in the Construction Sector: A Systematic Literature Review Jana Gerta Backes * and Marzia Traverso   Citation: Backes, J.G.; Traverso, M. Application of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment in the Construction Sector: A Systematic Literature Review. Processes 2021, 9, 1248. https://doi.org/10.3390/ pr9071248 Academic Editors: Ying (Gina) Tang, Michele Dassisti and Shixin Liu Received: 22 June 2021 Accepted: 16 July 2021 Published: 19 July 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Institute of Sustainability in Civil Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Mies-van-der-Rohe-Str. 1, 52074 Aachen, Germany; marzia.traverso@inab.rwth-aachen.de * Correspondence: jana.backes@inab.rwth-aachen.de Abstract: This paper reviews actual sustainability assessments in the construction sector to define whether and how a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) is applied and interpreted in this sector today. This industry has large shares in global energy (33%), raw material consumption (40%) and solid waste generation (40%). Simultaneously, it drives the economy and provides jobs. The LCSA is a method to identify environmental, social and economic impacts of products/services along their life cycles. The results of this study showed a mismatch between sectoral emissions and the number of LCSA-based impact evaluations. It was found that only 11% of papers reviewed assessed all three sustainability pillars. The economic and especially the social pillars were partly neglected. In Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), 100% made use of Global Warming Potential (GWP) but only 30% assessed more than five indicators in total. In Life Cycle Costing (LCC), there were a variety of costs assessed. Depreciation and lifetime were mainly neglected. We found that 42% made use of Net Present Value (NPV), while over 50% assessed individual indicators. For the Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), the focus was on the production stage; even the system boundaries were defined as cradle-to-use and -grave. Future approaches are relevant but there is no need to innovate: a proposal for a LCSA approach is made. Keywords: life cycle sustainability assessment; systematic review; construction; building; optimization 1. Introduction Sustainability is becoming increasingly important for actual and future generations and an essential part of today’s decisions in all sectors [1]. Late in 2019, the European Commission (EC) introduced the European Green Deal to tackle climate and environmental crises simultaneously. The recommendations in the EU masterplan for energy-intensive industries (such as the construction industry) were to make use of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) to measure the emissions of products and materials [2]. At an international level, the United Nations (UN) adopted a 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns (10YFP) in 2012. One out of the five areas in the program dealt with sustainable buildings and construction approaches, in which the importance of sustainable social housing and energy, along with resource efficiency throughout the supply chain, were clearly mentioned [3]. Buildings are often considered an important and integrated part of sustainable development because of their crucial role in society, the economy and the environment [4]: • The construction industry is responsible for about 10% of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs 100 million people [5]. • It consumes great amounts of resources: 33% of the global energy consumption is used by the construction sector, 40% of the raw material consumption belongs to it and the construction sector is contributing to 40% of the global solid waste generation [6,7]. • There is a high demand for concrete production, due to which the CO 2 emissions of the construction industry are responsible for about 7% of the global emissions, similar to the iron and steel industries [8–10]. Processes 2021, 9, 1248. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9071248 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/processes