Life Cycle Assessment of Green Buildings: A Case Study in China Jingke HONG 1 , Geoffrey Q.P. SHEN 2 and Yong FENG 3 1 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 999077, Email: jingke.hong@connect.poly.hk 2 Professor, Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 999077, Email: geoffrey.shen@polyu.edu.hk 3 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 999077, Email: 11902800r@connect.poly.hk ABSTRACT Due to the negative impact on the environment, particularly in terms of energy consumption and environmental load, the construction industry is the focus of attention for many researchers. By using life cycle assessment method, this study found the life cycle energy performance of a green office building in China in order to examine the achievements of green building technology and to identify the key points of green building construction and operation. After analyzing five scenarios, the result shows that the embodied energy of the case study office building ranged from 2.52 to 9.76 GJ/m 2 , and the operation energy was 0.21 GJ/m 2 yr. The findings suggest that it is necessary to use materials with high embodied energy intensity or frequent usage rate to conserve energy during the construction phase of a building, and to adopt energy saving equipment and new energy sources during occupation. INTRODUCTION In recent years the research community has shown a growing interest in sustainable buildings. Especially with the improvement of construction technology and the interest in environmental protection, buildings with low levels of harmful air emissions and low energy consumption are common objective of urban planners. It is an alarming fact that the construction industry is responsible for a considerable proportion of total energy consumption, harmful air emissions, and depletion of the world’s resources. The energy consumed by the building sector in China alone accounts for 2/5 of society’s energy use (Chang and Wang 2011). A serious environmental concern in China is the enormous amount of energy consumed by public buildings along with the extremely high speed of urban development. In the first decade of the twenty first century, the total area of public buildings in China increased by 12.4% (NBSC 2010). Public buildings in China consume more than 1/4 of the total energy used by the construction industry (ARCBEE 2010). To decrease the environmental impact from public buildings, China has implemented a series of green building policies. The Evaluation Standard 209 ICCREM 2013 © ASCE 2013 ICCREM 2013 Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by GEORGIA TECH LIBRARY on 01/17/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.